“You would rather we call him Isaac.”
“No. I would rather we stopped pretending. I cringe every time I hear you say you’re going to go visit a friend, or that you don’t have any plans for the weekend.”
“And what difference would it make if I said I was going to see Isaac?”
“I don’t know. Maybe none. I heard you took him to lunch at Bill’s. Denise and Sharon talked about it every minute you weren’t in the office. I think the consensus was that your heart was in the right place; you just didn’t understand what you were doing. That’s the kindness you get when people have known you since you were born. I was very proud of you when I heard that story.”
“And now?”
“And now I think of you sleeping in your car. I think you’re fucked if you can’t say more, even if it’s only to me.”
“You never gave me a straight answer about why you followed me when you thought I was going to see Isaac.”
“I told you to use your imagination.”
“I’ve asked you to do the same.”
“What do you think would have happened if Denise knew you were having a relationship with Isaac?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s not true. Of course you do. Denise would whisper to Sharon, and Sharon would tell her husband and her sister. You would come to the office and find them whispering, and after a few days, you’d begin to think that it was about you. After a week, you would start to think that people all over town were looking at you strangely. You would notice them trying to look directly past you when you ran into them in the grocery store and on the street. When Christmas came, you would have only half as many cards in your mailbox, and at least once a year, junior-high boys would throw a half-dozen eggs at your window.
“If you think they wouldn’t say anything, though, you’re right. They wouldn’t say a word. It would be rude and un-Christian to do so.
“I wanted to see you with Isaac for purely selfish reasons. Do you understand now?”
“I always did. I just wanted to hear you say it. I’ve wondered for the past year why you haven’t left.”
“I used to go to Mississippi in the summer with my father to visit his grandmother. They considered him a communist because he told them once not to use the word ‘nigger’ around his son. No one listened to him. My great-uncle took me to the black area of town the next day and said my father had some funny ideas in his head that he hoped to save me from.
“Most of the homes we drove past were nothing more than wooden shacks. I didn’t know people were that poor in this country. ‘Only niggers,’ my great-uncle said, ‘would live like that.’
“I asked my father why the black people didn’t leave. He said maybe they didn’t believe anything would change, or maybe they were waiting for the world to change around them and they wanted to be home when it did. It was the most eloquent thing he had ever said to me, and I knew he must have asked that same question himself and that was the best answer he could come up with. I would say both reasons are equally true.
“There’s a spare bedroom upstairs. Why don’t you get some sleep before you decide who to visit next?”
“And what if someone found out I had slept in the home of two different men in one day?”
“Will I see you at work on Monday?”
I didn’t have a plan yet, but I felt certain that was unlikely.
“I don’t know. But I hope not.”
ISAAC
We drove west for several hours before cutting north onto a trail of dirt roads that wound their way through empty green hills and the nameless hamlets that sat at their feet. The sun had begun to set by then, and from the back of the truck I watched as the hills caught all the colors that came with that. It was a beautiful sight, even more so because I was the only one deliberately noticing it. I was in the war, but I no longer belonged to it. I stood and at times sat among a dozen other men who rarely looked at me, even as we were constantly thrown against one another with every rock and bump in the road. I took out the notebook Isaac had given me and tried to think of something to write, but then thought better of it when I saw I was being watched. I drew a crude picture of the hills instead, so I could remember them.
When our convoy stopped at the checkpoint leading into the village, the soldiers leapt out the back of the truck and took their positions around the sides. The ones in the truck in front of us did the same, leaving me alone to watch as the horizon turned a deep orange more striking than the purple and red shades that had preceded it. From that slightly elevated perch I could see the tips of all the thatch-roofed huts in the village — hundreds of them, lined up neatly on either side of the main road, and every one looked as if it were burning.
Joseph and those closest to him, including Isaac, were the last to leave their cars. They filed out of the two sedans, dressed in identical button-down olive-green uniforms. It was also an impressive sight, no less remarkable than the sunset ending right in front of us. The soldiers manning the checkpoint stepped forward and saluted Joseph. Another lifted the crude metal barrier blocking the road, and with that, the town had either been officially seized or liberated. It was an important moment for Joseph. He had made his move; his army was a real thing now. The same was true for Isaac. He had also become more. He had staked himself to Joseph, and now he stood a few feet behind him. Once everyone was out of the car, he whispered into Joseph’s ear. I quietly applauded. I couldn’t help it; I was proud of Isaac for having made something of himself.
Joseph led the parade through the center of town. The entire village stood along the sidelines, soldiers flanking the roadside in front of them. His power grew as he walked. It expanded outward to touch every ring surrounding him until it was returned in lesser form to the wildly cheering crowd of men and women singing and applauding his arrival. He walked slowly, turning his head from side to side so that everyone gathered along the road could claim to have seen him. At that pace, it took him nearly an hour to make his way to the town center. In the central square, a bronze fist rose from the ground; it had been erected on the first anniversary of the country’s independence. There, in front of the fist, at the top of the four steps of the district headquarters, Joseph announced the start of the people’s liberation.
• • •
Joseph spent much of his speech listing the crimes and failed promises that had been committed since independence. There was vigorous cheering and constant applause, the lifeblood of a would-be demagogue. The most memorable parts of that speech came near the end, when he spoke of his father and the last time he saw him.
“He was a humble, simple man. He gave his life to defend and protect you,” Joseph said, “and it is in his memory that I swear to do the same.”
After he finished, the village’s former leaders were brought handcuffed to the top of the steps, bruised but still able to walk on their own. Joseph pulled out a key and unlocked each of them himself.
“Our liberation begins with them,” he said.
All those men were executed in their homes later that evening.
We took over the town’s only hotel, a dilapidated two-story building with an open, terraced courtyard in the middle and a crudely made wooden sign in the front that read “Life Hotel” in faded, barely legible blue paint. Isaac slept on the top floor of the hotel with Joseph and his inner circle; I slept outside, on the ground, with the other soldiers. When Isaac came downstairs in the morning, he had a rifle slung over his shoulder.