The War Game (3 page)

             
No food in the fridge except for a jar of spicy pickles.

             
Nothing in the cabinets. Except a family of centipedes.

             
But we did find a barrel of ketchup and several dozen bags of hardened hamburger buns. I started to put them into an empty cardboard box but the guy stopped me.

             
“Hey. We helped them with their little task they gave us so now we can help ourselves.” I looked confused so he clarified, “Ketchup sandwiches.”

             
He ripped open the plastic bag of buns with his fingers and pressed the lever down on the ketchup barrel, resting on the counter. Nothing came out. The hole was sealed with ketchup skin. He scraped it off with his fingernail and pressed down again. The ketchup splattered all over his shirt and the side of his face.

             
I couldn’t help it, I laughed. “You look like you just got shot about seventy times!”

             
He pretended to be wounded by a spray of bullets, backing to the counter, making a half-dozen industrial pots clatter all over the floor. Then he fell over, eyes closed.

             
“Well, I’ll just clean myself up now.” He dipped his finger onto the ketchup on his shirt and licked it.

             
It was dumb but I laughed. Again, like a dork. He smiled, seeming pleased to have made me laugh, even at his expense. He turned on the faucets but nothing but some gurgling noises came out of them.

             
So he took off his shirt. I knew I couldn’t turn away but then I couldn’t just stare at it.

             
He took a hamburger bun and tried again, this time unscrewing the cap and pouring out the ketchup.

             
He handed it to me and I felt like I had to take it. He bothered to make it for me. He ruined his shirt and shirts can be hard to come by, I know. I took it and sat on the counter. He made a sandwich for himself and ate it before I even took my fourth nibble.

             
After he finished his sandwich, he asked, “Whatcha got in that sack?”

             
I untied it and a couple beef sticks fell out. His eyes got really big.

             
“We’ve been eating ketchup sandwiches all this time and you’ve been holding out on me!”

             
“I guess I kind of forgot. Don’t tell anyone what I have, okay?”

             
“I won’t.”

             
There was a long silence. I took the initiative to kill it.

             
“You can have one—a couple, if you want.” I didn’t want to sound greedy or become hoard-ish like that creature in the tree.

             
He took two and said, “Lovely art back there in that tree house, don’t you think? Very modern? Just kidding. Just trying to make you laugh,” he smiled, biting the plastic wrapping off the beef jerky snack. I gnawed on a beef stick too.

             
“This sure is an old place,” I said. “Did you see the black and white pictures on the wall? Those must been from the 1950s. That’s over a hundred years ago.”

             
“Actually,” the boy started, “All the junk in here is replicas of old stuff.”

             
“Why would people want to make stuff look old?”

             
“To remind them of a better time. It’s called nostalgia. We need to find a place to stash this. Are you going to finish that?” he pointed towards the uneaten ketchup sandwich

             
I slowly started to shake my head no.

             
He took it, and I thought he was going to eat what was left, but he chucked it against the wall and it fell onto the checkered floor instead. “All right, let’s get going. We’ll find that guy and tell him about the treasure.”

             
We walked out; the guy was still standing around, telling people what they could do. Then he spotted us.

             
People were calling him Micah. He had blond hair that was practically white, huge muscular arms, and giving orders seemed to be second nature for him.

             
He had burns on his arms. That is how I knew he wasn’t a spy. I recognized those burns. Those burns were given out like candy to everyone except the kids back at this one camp where I stayed for years. The camp was in an old, condemned apartment building.

             
This one kid and I used to play in the stairwell all the time. I don’t remember his name. It might have been Max. Some name you’d give to a puppy. Most of the walls of the apartment were knocked out and beds were lined up like dominoes. There was barely any room to walk.

             
The toilets were one of the only things that stayed. Toilets, as in no doors or walls or even curtains for privacy. Toilets, just standing there in the middle of the room. But most of the occupants constructed curtains out of blankets. Blankets were hard to come by but people valued their privacy just as much, if not more, than warmth.

             
The toilets couldn’t flush, by the way. So it was basically just the equivalent of having a fancy, porcelain hole in the ground.

             
We played in the stairwell mostly because it was inside the building and hardly anyone came down. Ever. Once you crawled into bed, it was pretty hard to crawl out. “You may not be able to see the bugs but the bugs are mighty strong and can hold you down,” some old woman told us just about everyday. We got tired of the coughing and hacking of phlegm so we never went there much.

             
It was around that time that some states, namely the ones in the south, started dividing. Like a piece of wedding cake being cut up. Some states got so small, they only had a population of 10,000.

             
Well, those microstates got more votes and gained more power. They used their extra votes to pose restrictions, which they called “freedoms.” Like the freedom to pay for less expensive gas (that didn’t last long). And when they got rid of stuff, they called it “saving.” They made marriage illegal for some, called it saving a traditional reunion. And then they beat people during otherwise peaceful protests, they called it “protection.” Then the bigger states became untied.

             
I was about four when Minnesota officially became an Untied State. That’s what they call the former states. Untied. Some governor in Massachusetts thought it was really clever to switch around all of two letters in United and came up with that. Most of those states are emptied out and people have gone on to live in Canada or Mexico.

             
So the burning was supposed to be symbolic of rebirth. Or some said. Like a phoenix coming from the ashes of a fire. Or a reborn coming back from fiery depths of Hell through government-sponsored conversion therapy.

             
They burned the inside of people’s wrists.  Sometimes the palms.

             
“What’s your name?” Micah said.

             
“Pearl.” Whenever I told someone my name, this look came over their faces. Their eyebrows rose a little, they might smile. And then they’d feel inclined to make some sort of comment about it.

             
“Slaves once bought their freedom with pearls.” And there it was. “You could help entertain the children and keep them out of trouble. I’m sure Margaret is feeling overwhelmed about now.”

             
There was this man named Gary standing just a little too close to me. He was not any taller than I was, really skinny and wore glasses with cracked lenses. And a skirt.

             
Micah was hauling turned over park benches out of the walking path.

             
“I want to help out, too,” Gary said to Micah.

             
Micah quickly eyed him up and down, I could feel the judgment passing. “Help out by doing what? Planting flowers?”

             
I left before I could gauge Gary’s reaction.

~~~

             
I saw the kids, running around, playing tag by the kiddie park. There were at least a dozen children, either chubby like they’d been squished down or really tall and awkward like they’d been stretched out. All motherless and probably not very likely to get adopted.

             
There was this one little girl, Amber, who stuck out in a peculiar way from the other kids. She talked to inanimate objects more than people. The conversations often lead to arguments, even. I thought she was five but she said she was eleven. Bad case of malnourishment, I guessed. Lately, she’d been talking it up with a weathered paper cup she must have found in the grass or a trash barrel. She stopped whenever I got close by. I think she was teaching it how to tie a shoe.

             
I remember bits and pieces of school. I would get pulled out constantly and put into a small, special classroom. We would do some social activities and role-playing with puppets. They’d make us go around the room and find someone who’s been out of state (no one) or someone who has gone swimming (no one-at least, not swimming in a lake. You’d get some nasty disease that way).

             
I didn’t mind being pulled out, I hated the other children. But I hated when the special classroom time ended because I’d get back at the end of a science lesson and have no clue what was going on with Mars and space and things.

             
They had a bunch of rules, most of them silly. There was a list with about fifty of them in each room. Each list was different because each room had a different teacher. I would pick up my pencil to write my name on my paper (they gave me a last name for the sake of having a last name, “Smith”) but the English teacher would talk by my desk with her arms folded and scoff. And then point to the back wall where the posters were (the only decoration on the walls) and say, “Number thirty-six. Please adhere.”

             
She would always use big words a second-grader wouldn’t know and didn’t bother to explain them.

             
And I couldn’t be bothered to learn each teacher’s pet peeves and preferences. Which teachers wanted you to write your name on the left topside of the paper and which ones wanted you to use a blue pen for correcting.

             
But then again, they weren’t really teachers. They were paid volunteers.

             
I was documented and labeled with a “behavioral problem” and as an “at risk youth” and sent packing for camp. I thought I was going to boot camp. Nope, not that kind of camp.

~~~

             
I took a seat on a bench next to a snoring man. He had his arms folded, his head was dragging down.

             
The children seemed to be fine by themselves. Most of them ignored my presence but there was a red-haired girl with a soft little whispering voice, Chloe. She sat by my feet like a little kitten. She found a white rock and was scratching pictures of hearts into the pavement. Earlier, she had made a little labyrinth out of rocks and sticks. She must have spent a few hours meticulously laying out rocks and sticks to create this maze. The other kids spent all of about five minutes going through the labyrinth and then lost interest. Didn’t matter, I guess. It wasn’t created for them.

             
The baby, Logan, has been “adopted” by this gray-haired woman named Margaret. She tended to the baby by herself as Logan seemed to be very colicky. But I secretly thought Margaret wanted to keep the baby all to herself.

             
Watching the kids was a breeze, as they entertained themselves by pushing and knocking each other on the circle of swings. The swings were once a ride. No one had to push if you wanted to go on a swing. I guess the ride made the seats go around and around. I did have to yell at one boy, who was almost my age. He was being dumb and climbing the chains of the swings to the top of the ride like a monkey. I wanted to call him a dumbass but I was setting an example for the children. What goes up, must come down. There’s a word for it. Gravity. I didn’t learn that in school when I went. A soldier taught me it. I don’t think you want to know what he used to demonstrate that lesson with.

             
Chloe tried making a stick doll by tying strands of her red hair around the twigs to make legs. It wasn’t working (and it was rather creepy) so I pulled out the drawstring from my pants and let her use that. She made a family of dolls. Herself, her dads, and a dog.

             
It was about noon and I made an offer to watch the baby as Margaret went down to the restaurant to eat lunch. She said sure, but to come and get her if the baby needed changing.

             
The other kids sat on the bridge of the Splash, eating stale hamburger buns, feeding little bits they could spare to some birds. I took the baby and put her in a chipped red-painted swing, strapped her in, and gently pushed the swing so it would sway back and forth.