Citation de Charybde2
The waking hours were the most unkind. She lay still in bed, the mind aflame, the body paralyzed, unable to face the day. She clutched her mother’s butterfly brooch in her hand, its faded emerald stones smooth under her fingers. The nurses let her keep it, after they ripped the pin from its back.
This was in the days before – before Julia Templestowe became the rebel SOuth’s first martyr, its first killer, the patron saint of its war. It is often forgotten. There’s always a before.
The rebels recruited her with the bandages still fresh around her wrists. They found her in a bar on Farish Street across from the abandoned Alamo Theatre, its blue vertical sign missing its first and last letters. She was wearing a stranger’s throwaway dress, given to her by one of the nurses. She was drunk and alone once again with the terrible illness in her brain.
They knew how to find the ones who were most likely to do it. They kept watchers in the hospitals, where they looked for suicide attempts, and in the schools, where they looked for outcasts, and in the churches, where they looked for hard-boiled extremists feverish with the spell of the Lord.
From these, they forged weapons.
On the day the President was set to come to Jackson, they drove Julia to an abandoned farmhouse ten miles south of the city, where they outfitted her for death. She was to go in the guise of a pregnant woman. Within the cavity of her false belly they packed a thick paste of fertilizer and diesel fuel, planted with seeds of iron nail. They called it a farmer’s suit. A wire ran up along her chest and back down her left arm, covered by the sleeve of her shirt, and ending at a detonator taped to her wrist.
They’ll remember you for ever, they told her. When this is over they’ll build cities in your name.
This was in the days before – before Julia Templestowe became the rebel SOuth’s first martyr, its first killer, the patron saint of its war. It is often forgotten. There’s always a before.
The rebels recruited her with the bandages still fresh around her wrists. They found her in a bar on Farish Street across from the abandoned Alamo Theatre, its blue vertical sign missing its first and last letters. She was wearing a stranger’s throwaway dress, given to her by one of the nurses. She was drunk and alone once again with the terrible illness in her brain.
They knew how to find the ones who were most likely to do it. They kept watchers in the hospitals, where they looked for suicide attempts, and in the schools, where they looked for outcasts, and in the churches, where they looked for hard-boiled extremists feverish with the spell of the Lord.
From these, they forged weapons.
On the day the President was set to come to Jackson, they drove Julia to an abandoned farmhouse ten miles south of the city, where they outfitted her for death. She was to go in the guise of a pregnant woman. Within the cavity of her false belly they packed a thick paste of fertilizer and diesel fuel, planted with seeds of iron nail. They called it a farmer’s suit. A wire ran up along her chest and back down her left arm, covered by the sleeve of her shirt, and ending at a detonator taped to her wrist.
They’ll remember you for ever, they told her. When this is over they’ll build cities in your name.