23

! ! !

Your teachers

Are all around you.

All that you perceive,

All that you experience,

All that is given to you

or taken from you,

All that you love or hate,

need or fear

Will teach you—

If you will learn.

God is your first

and your last teacher.

God is your harshest teacher:

subtle,

demanding.

Learn or die.

EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2027

WE HAD ANOTHER BATTLE to try to sleep through before dawn this morning. It began to the south of us out on or near the highway, and worked its way first toward, then away from us.

We could hear people shooting, screaming, cursing, running… Same old stuff—tiresome, dangerous, and stupid. The shooting went on for over an hour, waxing and waning. There was a final barrage that seemed to involve more guns than ever. Then the noise stopped.

I managed to sleep through some of it. I got over being afraid, even got over being angry. In the end, I was

only tired. I thought, if the bastards are going to kill me, I canʼt stop them by staying awake. If that wasnʼt altogether true, I didnʼt care. I slept.

And somehow, during or after the battle, in spite of the watch, two people slipped into our camp and bedded down among us. They slept, too.

We awoke early as usual so that we could start walking while the heat wasnʼt too terrible. Weʼve learned to wake up without prompting at the first light of dawn. Today, four of us sat up in our bags at almost the same time. I was crawling out of my bag to go off and urinate when I spotted the extra people—two gray lumps in the dawn light, one large and one small, lying against each other, asleep on the bare ground. Thin arms and legs extended like sticks from rags and mounds of clothing.

I glanced around at the others and saw that they were staring where I was staring—all of them except Jill, who was supposed to be on watch. We began trusting her to stand night watch last week with a partner. This was only her second solitary watch. And where was she looking? Away into the trees. She and I would have to talk.

Harry and Travis were already reacting to the figures on the ground. In silence, each man was peeling out of his bag in his underwear, and standing up. More fully clothed, I matched them, move for move, and the three of us closed in around the two intruders.

The larger of the two awoke all at once, jumped up, darted two or three steps toward Harry, then stopped. It was a woman. We could see her better now. She was brown-skinned with a lot of long, straight, unkempt black hair. Her coloring was as dark as mine, but she was all planes and angles—a wiry, hawk-faced woman who could have used a few decent meals and a good scrubbing. She looked like a lot of people weʼve seen on the road.

The second intruder awoke, saw Travis standing nearby in his underwear, and screamed. That got everyoneʼs attention. It was the high, piercing shriek of a child—a little girl who looked about seven. She was a tiny, pinched image of the woman—her mother, or her sister perhaps.

The woman ran back to the child and tried to scoop her up. But the child had folded herself into a tight fetal knot and the woman, trying to lift her, could not get a grip. She stumbled, fell over, and in an instant she too had rolled herself into a tight ball. By then everyone had come to see.

“Harry,” I said, and waited until he looked at me. “Would you and Zahra keep watch—make sure nothing else surprises us.”

He nodded. He and Zahra detached from the cluster, separated, and took up positions on opposite sides of the camp, Harry nearest to the approach from the highway and Zahra on the approach from the nearest lesser road. We had buried ourselves as well as we could in a deserted area that Bankole said must once have been a park, but we didnʼt kid ourselves that we were alone. Weʼd followed I-5 to a small city outside Sacramento, away from the worst of the sprawl, but there were still plenty of poor people around—local paupers and refugees like us.

Where had this pair of ragged, terrified, filthy people come from?

“We wonʼt hurt you,” I said to them as they lay, still rolled up on the ground. “Get up. Come on, get up. Youʼve come into our camp unasked. You can at least talk to us.”

We didnʼt touch them. Bankole seemed to want to, but he stopped when I grasped his arm. They were already scared to death. A strange man, reaching out to them, might make them hysterical. Trembling, the woman unrolled herself and gazed up at us. Now I realized she looked Asian except for her coloring. She put her head down and whispered something to the child. After a moment, the two of them stood up.

“We didnʼt know this was your place,” she whispered. “Weʼll go away. Let us go away.” I sighed and looked at the terrified face of the little girl. “You can go,” I said. “Or if you like, you can eat with us.”

They both wanted to run away. They were like deer, frozen in terror, about to bolt. But Iʼd said the magic word. Two weeks ago, I wouldnʼt have said it, but I said today to these two starved-looking people: “eat.” “Food?” the woman whispered.

“Yes. Weʼll share a little food with you.”

The woman looked at the little girl. I was certain now that they were mother and daughter. “We canʼt pay,” she said. “We donʼt have anything.”

I could see that. “Just take what we give you and nothing more than we give you,” I said. “That will be pay enough.”

“We wonʼt steal. We arenʼt thieves.”

Of course they were thieves. How else could they live. Some stealing and scavenging, maybe some whoring… They werenʼt very good at it or theyʼd look better. But for the little kidʼs sake, I wanted to help them at least with a meal.

“Wait, then,” I said. “Weʼll put a meal together.”

They sat where they were and watched us with hungry, hungry eyes. There was more hunger in those eyes than we could fill with all our food. I thought I had probably made a mistake. These people were so desperate, they were dangerous. It didnʼt matter at all that they looked harmless. They were still alive and strong enough to run. They were not harmless.

It was Justin who eased some of the tension in those bottomless, hungry eyes. Stark naked, he toddled over to the woman and the girl and looked them over. The little girl only stared back, but after a moment, the

woman began to smile. She said something to Justin, and he smiled. Then he ran back to Allie who held on to him long enough to dress him. But he had done his work. The woman was seeing us with different eyes. She watched Natividad nursing Dominic, then watched Bankole combing his beard. This seemed funny to her and to the child, and they both giggled.

“Youʼre a hit,” I told Bankole.

“I donʼt see whatʼs so funny about a man combing his beard,” he muttered, and put way his comb. I dug sweet pears out of my pack, and took one each to the woman and the girl. I had just bought them two days before, and I had only three left. Other people got the idea and began sharing what they could spare. Shelled walnuts, apples, a pomegranate, Valencia oranges, figs…little things.

“Save what you can,” Natividad told the woman as she gave her almonds wrapped in a piece of red cloth. “Wrap things in here and tie the ends together.”

We all shared corn bread made with a little honey and the hard-boiled eggs we bought and cooked yesterday. We baked the corn bread in the coals of last nightʼs fire so that we could get away early this morning. The woman and the girl ate as though the plain, cold food were the best they had ever tasted, as though they couldnʼt believe someone had given it to them. They crouched over it as though they were afraid we might snatch it back.

“Weʼve got to go,” I said at last. “The sunʼs getting hotter.”

The woman looked at me, her strange, sharp face hungry again, but now not hungry for food. “Let us go with you,” she said, her words tumbling over one another. “Weʼll work. Weʼll get wood, make fire, clean dishes, anything. Take us with you.”

Bankole looked at me. “I assume you saw that coming.”

I nodded. The woman was looking from one of us to the other.

“Anything,” she whispered—or whimpered. Her eyes were dry and starved, but tears streamed from the little girlʼs eyes.

“Give us a moment to decide,” I said. I meant, Go away so my friends can yell at me in private, but the woman didnʼt seem to understand. She didnʼt move.

“Wait over there,” I said, pointing toward the trees nearest to the road. “Let us talk. Then weʼll tell you.” She didnʼt want to do it. She hesitated, then stood up, pulled her even more reluctant daughter up, and trudged off to the trees I had indicated.

“Oh God,” Zahra muttered. “Weʼre going to take them, arenʼt we?”

“Thatʼs what we have to decide,” I said.

“What, we feed her, and then we get to tell her to go away and finish starving?” Zahra made a noise of disgust.

“If she isnʼt a thief,” Bankole said. “And if she doesnʼt have any other dangerous habits, we may be able to carry them. That little kid…”

“Yes,” I said. “Bankole, is there room for them at your place?”

“His place?” three others asked. I hadnʼt had a chance to tell them about it. And I hadnʼt had the nerve. “He has a lot of land up north and over by the coast,” I said. “Thereʼs a family house that we canʼt live in because his sister and her family are there. But thereʼs room and trees and water. He says…” I swallowed, looked at Bankole who was smiling a little. “He says we can start Earthseed there—build what we can.” “Are there jobs?” Harry asked Bankole.

“My brother-in-law manages with year-round gardens and temporary jobs. Heʼs raising three kids that way.”

“But the jobs do pay money?”

“Yes, they pay. Not well, but they pay. Weʼd better hold off talking about this for a while. Weʼre torturing that young woman over there.”

“Sheʼll steal,” Natividad said. “She says she wonʼt, but she will. You can look at her and tell.” “Sheʼs been beaten,” Jill said. “The way they rolled up when we first spotted them. Theyʼre used to being beaten, kicked, knocked around.”

“Yeah.” Allie looked haunted. “You try to keep from getting hit in the head, try to protect your eyes and… your front. She thought we would beat her. She and the kid both.”

Interesting that Allie and Jill should understand so well. What a terrible father they had. And what had happened to their mother? They had never talked about her. It was amazing that they had escaped alive and sane enough to function.

“Should we let her stay?” I asked them.

Both girls nodded. “I think sheʼll be a pain in the ass for a while, though,” Allie said. “Like Natividad says, sheʼll steal. She wonʼt be able to stop herself. Weʼll have to watch her real good. That little kid will steal, too. Steal and run like hell.”

Zahra grinned. “Reminds me of me at that age. Theyʼll both be pains in the ass. I vote we try them. If they have manners or if they can learn manners, we keep them. If theyʼre too stupid to learn, we throw them out.” I looked at Travis and Harry, standing together. “What do you guys say?”

“I say youʼre going soft,” Harry said. “You would have raised hell if weʼd tried to take in a beggar woman and her child a few weeks ago.”

I nodded. “Youʼre right. I would have. And maybe thatʼs the attitude we should keep. But these two… I think they might be worth something—and I donʼt think theyʼre dangerous. If Iʼm wrong, we can always dump

them.”

“They might not take to being dumped,” Travis said. Then he shrugged. “I donʼt want to be the one to send that little kid out to be one more thief-beggar-whore. But think, Lauren. If we let them stay, and it doesnʼt work out, it might be damned hard to get rid of them. And if they turn out to have friends around here—friends that theyʼre scouting for, we might have to kill them.”

Both Harry and Natividad began to protest. Kill a woman and a child? No! Not possible! Never! The rest of us let them talk. When they ran down, I said, “It could get that bad, I suppose, but I donʼt think it will. That woman wants to live. Even more, she wants the kid to live. I think sheʼd put up with a lot for the kidʼs sake, and I donʼt think sheʼd put the kid in danger by scouting for a gang. Gangs are more direct out here, anyway. They donʼt need scouts.”

Silence.

“Shall we try them?” I asked. “Or shall we turn them away now?”

“Iʼm not against them,” Travis said. “Let them stay, for the kidʼs sake. But letʼs go back to having two watchers at once during the night. How the hell did those two get in here like that, anyway?” Jill shrank a little. “They could have gotten in anytime last night,” she said. “Anytime.” “What we donʼt see can kill us,” I said. “Jill, you didnʼt see them?”

“They could have been there when I took over the watch!”

“You still didnʼt see them. They could have cut your throat—or your sisterʼs.”

“Well. They didnʼt.”

“The next one might.” I leaned toward her. “The world is full of crazy, dangerous people. We see signs of that every day. If we donʼt watch out for ourselves, they will rob us, kill us, and maybe eat us. Itʼs a world gone to hell, Jill, and weʼve only got each other to keep it off us.”

Sullen silence.

I reached out and took her hand. “Jill.”

“It wasnʼt my fault!” she said. “You canʼt prove I—”

“Jill!”

She shut up and stared at me.

“Listen, no one is going to beat you up, for heaven sake, but you did something wrong, something dangerous. You know you did.”

“So what do you want her to do?” Allie demanded. “Get on her knees and say sheʼs sorry?” “I want her to love her own life and yours enough not to be careless. Thatʼs what I want. Thatʼs what you should want, now more than ever. Jill?”

Jill closed her eyes. “Oh shit!” she said. And then, “All right, all right! I didnʼt see them. I really didnʼt. Iʼll watch better. No one else will get by me.”

I clasped her hand for a moment longer, then let it go. “Okay. Letʼs get out of here. Letʼs collect that scared woman and her scared little kid and get out of here.”

The two scared people turned out to be the most racially mixed that I had ever met. Hereʼs their story, put together from the fragments they told us during the day and tonight. The woman had a Japanese father, a black mother, and a Mexican husband, all dead. Only she and her daughter are left. Her name is Emery Tanaka Solis. Her daughter is Tori Solis. Tori is nine years old, not seven as I had guessed. I suspect she has rarely had enough to eat in her life. Sheʼs tiny, quick, quiet, and hungry-eyed. She hid bits of food in her filthy rags until we made her a new dress from one of Bankoleʼs shirts. Then she hid food in that. Although Tori is nine, her mother is only twenty-three. At thirteen, Emery married a much older man who promised to take care of her. Her father was already dead, killed in someone elseʼs gunfight. Her mother was sick, and dying of tuberculosis. The mother pushed Emery into marriage to save her from victimization and starvation in the streets.

Up to that point, the situation was dreary, but normal. Emery had three children over the next three years —a daughter and two sons. She and her husband did farm work in trade for food, shelter, and hand-me-downs. Then the farm was sold to a big agribusiness conglomerate, and the workers fell into new hands. Wages were paid, but in company scrip, not in cash. Rent was charged for the workersʼ shacks. Workers had to pay for food, for clothing—new or used—for everything they needed, and, of course they could only spend their company notes at the company store. Wages—surprise!—were never quite enough to pay the bills. According to new laws that might or might not exist, people were not permitted to leave an employer to whom they owed money. They were obligated to work off the debt either as quasi-indentured people or as convicts. That is, if they refused to work, they could be arrested, jailed, and in the end, handed over to their employers.

Either way, such debt slaves could be forced to work longer hours for less pay, could be “disciplined” if they failed to meet their quotas, could be traded and sold with or without their consent, with or without their families, to distant employers who had temporary or permanent need of them. Worse, children could be forced to work off the debt of their parents if the parents died, became disabled, or escaped.

Emeryʼs husband sickened and died. There was no doctor, no medicine beyond a few expensive over the-counter preparations and the herbs that the workers grew in their tiny gardens. Jorge Francisco Solis died in fever and pain on the earthen floor of his shack without ever seeing a doctor. Bankole said it sounded as though he died of peritonitis brought on by untreated appendicitis. Such a simple thing. But then, thereʼs nothing more replaceable than unskilled labor.

Emery and her children became responsible for the Solis debt. Accepting this, Emery worked and endured until one day, without warning, her sons were taken away. They were one and two years younger than

her daughter, and too young to be without both their parents. Yet they were taken. Emery was not asked to part with them, nor was she told what would be done with them. She had terrible suspicions when she recovered from the drug she had been given to “quiet her down.” She cried and demanded the return of her sons and would not work again until her masters threatened to take her daughter as well.

She decided then to run away, to take her daughter and brave the roads with their thieves, rapists, and cannibals. They had nothing for anyone to steal, and rape wasnʼt something they could escape by remaining slaves. As for the cannibals…well, perhaps they were only fantasies—lies intended to frighten salves into accepting their lot.

“There are cannibals,” I told her as we ate that night. “Weʼve seen them. I think, though, that theyʼre scavengers, not killers. They take advantage of road kills, that kind of thing.”

“Scavengers kill,” Emery said. “If you get hurt or if you look sick, they come after you.” I nodded, and she went on with her story. Late one night, she and Tori slipped out past the armed guards and electrified fences, the sound and motion detectors and the dogs. Both knew how to be quiet, how to fade from cover to cover, how to lie still for hours. Both were very fast. Slaves learned things like that—the ones who lived did. Emery and Tori must have been very lucky.

Emery had some notion of finding her sons and getting them back, but she had no idea where they had been taken. They had been driven away in a truck; she knew that much. But she didnʼt know even which way the truck turned when it reached the highway. Her parents had taught her to read and write, but she had seen no writing about her sons. She had to admit after a while that all she could do was save her daughter.

Living on wild plants and whatever they could “find” or beg, they drifted north. That was the way Emery said it: they found things. Well, if I were in her place, I would have found a few things, too. A gang fight drove her to us. Gangs are always a special danger in cities. If you keep to the road while youʼre in individual gang territories, you might escape their attentions. We have so far. But the overgrown park land where we camped last night was, according to Emery, in dispute. Two gangs shot at each other and called insults and accusations back and forth. Now and then they stopped to shoot at passing trucks. During one of these intervals, Emery and Tori who had camped close to the roadside had slipped away. “One group was coming closer to us,” Emery said. “They would shoot and run. When they ran, they got closer. We had to get away. We couldnʼt let them hear us or see us. We found your clearing, but we didnʼt see you. You know how to hide.”

That, I suppose was a compliment. We try to disappear into the scenery when thatʼs possible. Most of the time it isnʼt. Tonight it isnʼt. And tonight we watch two at a time.

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2027

Tori Solis has found us two more companions today: Grayson Mora and his daughter Doe. Doe was only a year younger than Tori, and the two little girls, walking along, going the same way, became friends. Today we turned west on State Highway 20 and were heading back toward U.S. 101. We spent a lot of time talking about settling on Bankoleʼs land, about jobs and crops and what we might build there.

Meanwhile, the two little girls, Tori and Doe were making friends and pulling their parents together. The parents were alike enough to attract my attention. They were about the same age—which meant that the man had become a father almost as young as the woman had become a mother. That wasnʼt unusual, but it was unusual that he had taken charge of his child.

He was a tall, thin, black Latino, quiet, protective of his child, yet tentative, somehow. He liked Emery. I could see that. Yet on some level he wanted to get away from her—and away from us. When we left the road to make camp, he would have gone on if his daughter had not begged, then cried to stay with us. He had his own food so I told him he could camp near us if he wanted to. Two things hit me as I talked to him.

First, he didnʼt like us. That was obvious. He didnʼt like us at all. I thought he might resent us because we were united and armed. You tend to resent the people youʼre afraid of. I told him we kept a watch, and that if he could put up with that, he was welcome. He shrugged and said in his soft, cold voice, “Oh, yeah.”

Heʼll stay. His kid wants it and some part of him wants it, but somethingʼs wrong. Something beyond ordinary traveler caution.

The second thing is only my suspicion. I believe Grayson and Doe Mora were also slaves. Yet Grayson is now a rich pauper. He has a pair of sleepsacks, food, water, and money. If Iʼm right, he took them off someone —or off someoneʼs corpse.

Why do I think he was a slave? That odd tentativeness of his is just too much like Emeryʼs. And Doe and Tori, though they donʼt look alike at all, seem to understand each other like sisters. Little kids can do that sometimes, without it meaning anything. Just being little kids together is enough. But Iʼve never seen any kids but these two both show the tendency to drop to the ground and roll into a fetal knot when frightened.

Doe did just that when she tripped and fell, and Zahra stepped over to see whether she was hurt. Doeʼs body snapped into a trembling ball. Was that, as Jill and Allie supposed, what people did when they expected to be beaten or kicked—a posture of protection and submission both at once?

“Something wrong about that fellow,” Bankole said, glancing at Grayson as we bedded down next to each other. We had eaten and heard more of Emeryʼs story, and talked a little, but we were tired. I had my writing to do, and Travis and Jill were on watch. Bankole, who had an early morning watch with Zahra just wanted to talk. He sat beside me and spoke into my ear in a voice so low that if I leaned away from him, I lost words. “Moraʼs too jumpy,” he said. “He flinches if someone walks close to him.”

“I think heʼs another ex-slave,” I said in a voice just as low. “That might not be his only problem, but itʼs his most obvious one.”

“So you picked up on that, too.” He put his arm around me and sighed. “I agree. Both he and the child.” “And he doesnʼt love us.”

“He doesnʼt trust us. Why should he? Weʼll have to watch all four of them for a while. Theyʼre…odd. They might be stupid enough to try to grab some of our packs and leave some night. Or it might just be a matter of little things starting to disappear. The children are more likely to get caught at it. Yet if the adults stay, it will be for the childrenʼs sake. If we take it easy on the children and protect them, I think the adults will be loyal to us.”

“So we become the crew of a modern underground railroad,” I said. Slavery again—even worse than my father thought, or at least sooner. He thought it would take a while.

“None of this is new.” Bankole made himself comfortable against me. “In the early 1990s while I was in college, I heard about cases of growers doing some of this—holding people against their wills and forcing them to work without pay. Latins in California, blacks and Latins in the south… Now and then, someone would go to jail for it.”

“But Emery says thereʼs a new law—that forcing people or their children to work off debt that they canʼt help running up is legal.”

“Maybe. Itʼs hard to know what to believe. I suppose the politicians may have passed a law that could be used to support debt slavery. But Iʼve heard nothing about it. Anyone dirty enough to be a slaver is dirty enough to tell a pack of lies. You realize that that womanʼs children were sold like cattle—and no doubt sold into prostitution.”

I nodded. “She knows, too.”

“Yes. My God.”

“Things are breaking down more and more.” I paused. “Iʼll tell you, though, if we can convince ex-slaves that they can have freedom with us, no one will fight harder to keep it. We need better guns, though. And we need to be so careful… It keeps getting more dangerous out here. It will be especially dangerous with those little girls around.”

“Those two know how to be quiet,” Bankole said. “Theyʼre little rabbits, fast and silent. Thatʼs why theyʼre still alive.”

24

! ! !

Respect God:

Pray working.

Pray learning,

planning,

doing.

Pray creating,

teaching,

reaching.

Pray working.

Pray to focus your thoughts,

still your fears,

strengthen your purpose.

Respect God.

Shape God.

Pray working.

EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2027

WE READ SOME VERSES and talked about Earthseed for a while this morning. It was a calming thing to do—almost like church. We needed something calming and reassuring. Even the new people joined in, asking questions, thinking aloud, applying the verses to their experiences.

God is Change, and in the end, God does prevail. But we have something to say about the whens and the whys of that end.

Yeah.

Itʼs been a horrible week.

Weʼve taken both today and yesterday as rest days. We might take tomorrow as well. I need it whether the others do or not. Weʼre all sore and sick, in mourning and exhausted—yet triumphant. Odd to be triumphant. I think itʼs because most of us are still alive. We are a harvest of survivors. But then, thatʼs what weʼve always been.

This is what happened.

At our noon stop on Tuesday, Tori and Doe, the two little girls, went away from the group to urinate. Emery went with them. She had kind of taken charge of Doe as well as her own daughter. The night before, she and Grayson Mora had slipped away from the group and stayed away for over an hour. Harry and I were on watch, and we saw them go. Now they were a couple—all over each other, but at armʼs length from everyone else. Strange people.

So Emery took the girls off to pee—not far away. Just across the hill face and out of sight behind a patch of dead bushes and tall, dry grass. The rest of us sat eating, drinking, and sweating in what shade we could get from a copse of oak trees that looked only half dead. The trees had been robbed of a great number of branches, no doubt by people needing firewood. I was looking at their many jagged wounds when the screaming began.

First there were the high, needle thin, needle sharp shrieks of the little girls, then we heard Emery shouting for help. Then we heard a manʼs voice, cursing.

Most of us jumped up without thinking and ran toward the noise. In midstride, I grabbed Harry and Zahra by the arms to get their attention. Then I gestured them back to guard our packs and Natividad and Allie who had stayed with the babies. Harry had the rifle and Zahra had one of the Berettas, and in that moment, they both resented the hell out of me. No matter. For the moment, I was just glad to see them go back. They could cover us if necessary, and keep us from being overwhelmed.

We found Emery fighting with a big bald man who had grabbed Tori. Doe was already running back to us, screaming. She ran straight into her fatherʼs arms. He swept her up and ran off toward the highway, then he veered back toward the oaks and our people. There were other bald people coming up from the highway. Like us, they ran toward the screams. I saw metal gleaming among them—perhaps only knives. Perhaps guns. Travis spotted the group, too, and yelled a warning before I could.

I fell back, dropped to one knee, aimed my .45 two-handed, and waited for a clear shot at Emeryʼs attacker. The man was much taller than Emery, and his head and shoulders were exposed except where he held Tori against him. The little girl looked like a doll that he was clutching in one arm. Emery was the problem. She, small and quick, was darting at the man, tearing at his face, trying to reach his eyes. He was trying to protect his eyes and to knock or throw her away from him. With both hands free, he might have been quick enough to bat her aside, but he wouldnʼt let go of the struggling Tori, and Emery wouldnʼt be beaten off.

For an instant, he did knock Emery back from him. In that brief window of time, my own ears ringing from his blow, I shot him.

I knew at once that Iʼd hit him. He didnʼt fall, but I felt his pain, and I wasnʼt good for anything else for a while. Then he toppled, and I collapsed with him. But I could still see and hear, and I still had the gun. I heard shouting. The bald gang from the highway was almost on us—six, seven, eight people. I couldnʼt do anything while I was dealing with the pain, but I saw them. Instants later when the man I had shot lost consciousness or died, I was free—and needed.

Bankole had our only other gun away from camp.

I got up before I should have, almost fell down again, then shot a second attacker off Travis who was carrying Emery.

I went down again, but didnʼt lose consciousness. I saw Bankole grab Tori and all but throw her to Jill. Jill caught her, turned, and ran back toward camp with her.

Bankole reached me, and I was able to get up and help him cover our retreat.

We had only the scarred trees to retreat to, but they had thick, solid-looking trunks. An attacker fired several bullets into them as we reached them.

It took me several seconds to understand that someone was shooting at us. Once I did, I dropped behind the trees with the others and looked for the opposing gun.

Our rifle thundered behind me before I could spot anything. Harry, on the job. He fired twice more. I fired twice myself, barely aiming, barely in control. I believe Bankole fired. Then I was lost, no more good for anything. I died with someone. The shooting stopped.

I died with someone else. Someone laid hands on me and I came within a fingers twitch of squeezing the trigger once more.

Bankole.

“You stupid asshole!” I whimpered. “I almost killed you.”

“Youʼre bleeding,” he said.

I was surprised. I tried to remember whether Iʼd been shot. Maybe I had just come down on a sharp piece of wood. I had no sense of my own body. I hurt, but I couldnʼt have said where—or even whether the pain was mine or someone elseʼs. The pain was intense, yet defuse somehow. I felt…disembodied. “Is everyone else all right?” I asked.

“Be still,” he said.

“Is it over, Bankole?”

“Yes. The survivors have run away.”

“Take my gun, then, and give it to Natividad—in case they decide to come back.”

I think I felt him take the gun from my hand. I heard muffled talk that I didnʼt quite understand. That was when I realized I was losing consciousness. All right then. At least I had held on long enough to do some good. Jill Gilchrist is dead.

She was shot in the back as she ran toward the trees carrying Tori. Bankole didnʼt tell me, didnʼt want me to know before I had to because, as it turned out, I was wounded myself. I was lucky. My wound was minor. It hurt, but other than that, it didnʼt matter much. Jill was unlucky. I found out about her death when I came to and heard Allieʼs hoarse screaming grief.

Jill had gotten Tori back to the trees, put her down, then, without a sound, folded to the ground as though taking cover. Emery had grabbed Tori and huddled, crying with her in terror and relief. Everyone else had been busy, first taking cover, then firing or directing fire. Travis was the first to see the blood pooling around Jill. He shouted for Bankole, then turned Jill onto her back and saw blood welling from what turned out to be an exit wound in her chest. Bankole says she died before he reached her. No last words, no last sight of her sister, not even the assurance that she had saved the little girl. She had. Tori was bruised, but fine. Everyone was fine except Jill.

My own wound, to be honest, was a big scratch. A bullet had plowed a furrow straight through the flesh of my left side, leaving little damage, a lot of blood, a couple of holes in my shirt, and a lot of pain. The wound throbbed worse than a burn, but it wasnʼt disabling.

“Cowboy wound,” Harry said when he and Zahra came to look me over. They looked dirty and miserable, but Harry tried to be upbeat for me. They had just helped to bury Jill. The group had, with hands, sticks, and our hatchet, dug a shallow grave for her while I was unconscious. They put her among the treesʼ roots, covered her, and rolled big rocks atop her grave. The trees were to have her, but the dogs and the cannibals were not.

The group had decided to bed down for the night where we were, even though our oak copse should have been rejected as an overnight camp because it was too close to the highway.

“Youʼre a goddamn fool and too big to carry” Zahra told me. “So just rest there and let Bankole take care of you. Not that anyone could stop him.”

“Youʼve just got a cowboy wound,” Harry repeated. “In that book I bought, people are always getting shot in the side or the arm or the shoulder, and itʼs nothing—although Bankole says a good percentage of them would have died of tetanus or some other infection.”

“Thanks for the encouragement,” I said.

Zahra gave him a look, then patted my arm. “Donʼt worry,” she said. “No germ will get past that old man. Heʼs mad as hell at you for getting yourself shot. Says if you had any sense, you would have stayed back here with the babies.”

“What?”

“Hey, heʼs old,” Harry said. “What do you expect.”

I sighed. “Howʼs Allie?”

“Crying.” He shook his head. “She wonʼt let anyone near her except Justin. Even he keeps trying to comfort her. It upsets him that sheʼs crying.”

“Emery and Tori are kind of beaten up, too,” Zahra said. “Theyʼre the other reason weʼre not moving.” She paused. “Hey, Lauren, you ever notice anything funny about those two—Emery and Tori, I mean? And about that guy Mora, too.”

Something clicked into place for me, and I sighed again. “Theyʼre sharers, arenʼt they?” “Yes, all of them—both adults and both kids. You knew?”

“Not until now. I did notice something odd: that tentativeness and touchiness—not wanting to be touched, I mean. And they were all slaves. My brother Marcus once said what good slaves sharers would make.” “That Mora guy wants to leave,” Harry said.

“So let him go,” I answered. “He tried to run out on us just before the shooting.”

“He came back. He even helped dig Jillʼs grave. I mean he wants us all to leave. He says that gang we beat will come back when itʼs dark.”

“Heʼs sure?”

“Yeah. Heʼs going crazy, wanting to get his kid out of here.”

“Can Emery and Tori make it?”

“Iʼll carry Tori,” a new voice said. “Emery can make it.” Grayson Mora, of course. Last seen abandoning ship.

I got up slowly. My side hurt. Bankole had cleaned and bandaged the wound while I was unconscious,

and that was a piece of luck. Now, though, I felt half-conscious, half-detached from my body. I felt everything except pain as though through a thick layer of cotton. Only the pain was sharp and real. I was almost grateful for it.

“I can walk,” I said after trying a few steps. “But I feel like Iʼm walking on stilts. I donʼt know if I can keep the usual pace.”

Grayson Mora stepped close to me. He glanced at Harry as though he wished Harry would go away. Harry just stared back at him.

“How many times did you die?” Mora asked me.

“Three at least,” I answered, as though this were a sane conversation. “Maybe four. I never did it like that before—over and over. Insane. But you look well enough.”

His expression hardened as though Iʼd slapped him. Of course, I had insulted him. Iʼd said, Where were you, man and fellow sharer, while your woman and your group were in danger. Funny. There I was, speaking a language I hadnʼt realized I knew.

“I had to get Doe out of danger,” he said. “I had no gun, anyway.”

“Can you shoot?”

He hesitated. “Never shot before,” he admitted, dropping his voice to a mumble. Again Iʼd shamed him— this time without meaning to.

“When we teach you to shoot, will you, to protect the group?”

“Yeah!” Though at that moment, I think he would have preferred to shoot me.

“It hurts like hell,” I warned.

He shrugged. “Most things do.”

I looked into his thin, angry face. Were all slaves so thin—underfed, overworked, and taught that most things hurt? “Are you from this area?”

“Born in Sacramento.”

“Then we need all the information you can give us. Even without a gun, we need you to help us survive here.”

“My information is to get out of here before those things up the hill throw paint on themselves and start shooting people and setting fires.”

“Oh, shit,” I said. “So thatʼs what they are.”

“Whatʼd you think they were?”

“I didnʼt have a chance to think about them. It wouldnʼt have mattered anyway. Harry, did you guys strip the dead?”

“Yeah.” He gave me a thin smile. “We got another gun—a .38. I put some stuff in your pack from the ones you killed.”

“Thank you. I donʼt know that I can carry my pack yet. Maybe Bankole—”

“Heʼs already got it on his cart. Letʼs go.”

We headed out toward the road.

“Is that how you do it?” Grayson Mora asked, walking next to me. “Whoever kills takes?” “Yes, but we donʼt kill unless someone threatens us,” I said. “We donʼt hunt people. We donʼt eat human flesh. We fight together against enemies. If one of us is in need, the rest help out. And we donʼt steal from one another, ever.”

“Emery said that. I didnʼt believe her at first.”

“Will you live as we do?”

“…yeah. I guess so.”

I hesitated. “So what else is wrong? I can see that you donʼt trust us, even now.”

He walked closer to me, but did not touch me. “Whereʼd that white man come from?” he demanded. “Iʼve known him all my life,” I said. “He and I and the others have kept one another alive for a long time, now.”

“But…him and those others, they donʼt feel anything. Youʼre the only one who feels.” “We call it sharing. Iʼm the only one.”

“But they… You…”

“We help each other. A group is strong. One or two people are easier to rob and kill.” “Yeah.” He looked around at the others. There was no great trust or liking in his expression, but he looked more relaxed, more satisfied. He looked as though he had solved a troubling puzzle. Testing him, I let myself stumble. It was easy. I still had little feeling in my feet and legs. Mora stepped aside. He didnʼt touch me or offer help. Sweet guy.

I left Mora, went over to Allie, and walked with her for a while. Her grief and resentment were like a wall against me—against everyone, I suppose, but I was the one bothering her at the moment. And I was alive and her sister was dead, and her sister was the only family she had left, and why didnʼt I just get the hell out of her face?

She never said anything. She just pretended I wasnʼt there. She pushed Justin along in his carriage and wiped tears from her stony face now and then with a swift, whiplike motion. She was hurting herself, doing that. She was rubbing her face too hard, too fast, rubbing it raw. She was hurting me, too, and I didnʼt need any more pain. I stayed with her, though, until her defenses began to crumble under a new wave of crippling grief. She stopped hurting herself and just let the tears run down her face, let them fall to her chest or to the broken

blacktop. She seemed to sag under a sudden weight.

I hugged her then. I put my hands on her shoulders and stopped her half-blind plodding. When she swung around to face me, hostile and hurting, I hugged her. She could have broken free. I was feeling far from strong just then, but after a first angry pulling away, she hung on to me and moaned. Iʼve never heard anyone

moan like that. She cried and moaned there at the roadside, and the others stopped and waited for us. No one spoke. Justin began to whimper and Natividad came back to comfort him. The wordless message was the same for both child and woman: In spite of your loss and pain, you arenʼt alone. You still have people who care about you and want you to be all right. You still have family.

After a while, Allie and I let each other go. She isnʼt a chatty woman, especially not in her pain. She took Justin from Natividad, smoothed his hair, and held him. When we began walking again, she carried him for a while, and I pushed the carriage. We walked together, and there didnʼt seem to be any need to say anything.

On the road, there was a fair amount of foot traffic in both directions. Still, I worried that a big group like ours would be noticeable and locatable, no matter what. I worried because I didnʼt understand the ways of our attackers.

Sometime later when Allie put Justin back into the carriage and took the carriage from me, I moved to walk with Bankole and Emery. Emery was the one who explained things to me, and she was the one who spotted the smoke from the first fire—no doubt because she was looking for it. We couldnʼt tell for sure, but the fire looked as though it might have begun back as far as where we had stopped at the oak copse.

“Theyʼll burn everything,” Emery whispered to Bankole and me. “They wonʼt stop until theyʼve used up all the ʼro they have. All night, theyʼll be burning things. Things and people.”

ʼRo, pyro, pyromania. That damned fire drug again.

“Will they follow us?” I asked.

She shrugged. “There are a lot of us, and you killed some of them. I think theyʼll take their revenge on other, weaker travelers.” Another shrug. “To them weʼre all the same. A traveler is a traveler.” “So unless we get caught in one of their fires…”

“Weʼll be okay, yeah. They hate everybody who isnʼt them. They would have sold my Tori to get some more ʼro.”

I looked at her bruised, swollen face. Bankole had given her something for her pain. I was grateful for that, and half-angry at him for refusing to give me anything. He didnʼt understand my numbness and grogginess back at the copse, and it disturbed him. Well at least that had faded away. Let him die three or four times and see how he feels. No, Iʼm glad heʼll never know how it feels. It makes no sense. That brief, endless agony, over and over. It makes no sense at all. I keep catching myself wondering how it is that Iʼm still alive. “Emery?” I said, keeping my voice low.

She looked at me.

“You know Iʼm a sharer.”

She nodded, then glanced sidelong at Bankole.

“He knows,” I assured her. “But…look, you and Grayson are the first sharers Iʼve known who had children.” There was no reason to tell her she and Grayson and their children were the first sharers Iʼd known period. “I hope to have kids myself someday, so I need to know…do they always inherit the sharing?”

“One of my boys didnʼt have it,” she said. “Some feelers—sharers—canʼt have any kids. I donʼt know why. And I knew some who had two or three kids who didnʼt have it at all. Bosses, though, they like you to have it.” “Iʼll bet they do.”

“Sometimes,” she continued, “sometimes they pay more for people who have it. Especially kids.” Her kids. Yet they had taken a boy who wasnʼt a sharer and left a girl who was. How long would it have been before they came back for the girl? Perhaps they had a lucrative offer for the boys as a pair, so they sold them first.

“My god,” Bankole said. “This country has slipped back two hundred years.”

“Things were better when I was little,” Emery said. “My mother always said they would get better again. Good times would come back. She said they always did. My father would shake his head and not say anything.” She looked around to see where Tori was and spotted her on Grayson Moraʼs shoulders. Then she caught sight of something else, and she gasped.

We followed her gaze and saw fire creeping over the hills behind us—far behind us, but not far enough. This was some new fire, whipping along in the dry evening breeze. Either the people who attacked us had followed us, setting fires, or someone was imitating them, echoing them.

We went on, moving faster, trying to see where we could go to be safe. On either side of the highway, there was dry grass, there were trees, living and dead. So far, the fire was only on the north side. We kept to the south side, hoping it would be safe. There was a lake ahead, according to my map of the area—Clear Lake, it was called. The map showed it to be large, and the highway followed its northern shore for a few miles. We would reach it soon. How soon?

I calculated as we walked. Tomorrow. We should be able to camp near it tomorrow evening. Not soon enough.

I could smell the smoke now. Did that mean the wind was blowing the fire toward us? Other people began hurrying and keeping to the south side of the road and heading west. No one went east now. There were no trucks yet, but it was getting late. They would be barreling through soon. And we should be camping for the night soon. Did we dare?

The south side still seemed free of fire behind us, but on the north side the fire crawled after us, coming no closer, but refusing to be left behind.

We went on for a while, all of us looking back often, all of us tired, some of us hurting. I called a halt and gestured us off the road to the south at a place where there was room to sit and rest.

“We canʼt stay here,” Mora said. “The fire could jump the road any time.”

“We can rest here for a few moments,” I said. “We can see the fire, and it will tell us when weʼd better start walking again.”

“Weʼd better start now!” Mora said. “If that fire gets going good, it will move faster than we can run! Best to keep well ahead of it!”

“Best to have the strength to keep ahead of it,” I said, and I took a water bottle from my pack and drank. We were within sight of the road and we had made it a rule not to eat or drink in such exposed places, but today that rule had to be suspended. To go into the hills away from the road might mean being cut off from the road by fire. We couldnʼt know when or where a windblown piece of burning debris might land.

Others followed my example and drank and ate a little dried fruit, meat, and bread. Bankole and I shared with Emery and Tori. Mora seemed to want to leave in spite of us, but his daughter Doe was sitting half asleep on the ground against Zahra. He stooped next to her and made her drink a little water and eat some fruit.

“We might have to keep moving all night,” Allie said, her voice almost too soft to hear. “This might be the only rest we get.” And to Travis, “Youʼd better put Dominic into the carriage with Justin when heʼs finished eating.”

Travis nodded. Heʼd carried Dominic this far. Now he tucked him in with Justin. “Iʼll push the carriage for a while,” he said.

Bankole looked at my wound, rebandaged it, and this time gave me something for the pain. He buried the bloody bandages he had removed, digging a shallow hole with a flat rock.

Emery, with Tori gone to sleep against her, looked to see what Bankole was doing with me, then jumped and looked away, her hand going to her own side.

“I didnʼt know you were hurt so much,” she whispered.

“Iʼm not,” I said, and made myself smile. “It looks nastier than it is with all the blood, but it isnʼt bad. Iʼm damned lucky compared to Jill. And it doesnʼt stop me from walking.”

“You didnʼt give me any pain when we were walking,” she said.

I nodded, glad to know I could fake her out. “Itʼs ugly,” I said, “but not too painful.”

She settled down as though she felt better. No doubt she did. If I moaned and groaned, Iʼd have all four of them moaning and groaning. The kids might even bleed along with me. I would have to be careful and keep lying at least as long as the fire was a threat—or as long as I could.

The truth was, those blood-saturated bandages scared the hell out of me, and the wound hurt worse than ever. But I knew I had to keep going or burn. After a few minutes, Bankoleʼs pills began to take the edge off my pain, and that made the whole world easier to endure.

We had about an hourʼs rest before the fire made us too nervous to stay where we were. Then we got up and walked. By then, at some point behind us, the fire had already jumped the road. Now, neither the north nor the south side looked safe. Until it was dark, all we could see in the hills behind us was smoke. It was a terrifying, looming, moving wall.

Later, after dark, we could see the fire eating its way toward us. There were dogs running along the road with us, but they paid no attention to us. Cats and deer ran past us, and a skunk scuttled by. It was live and let live. Neither humans nor animals were foolish enough to waste time attacking one another. Behind us and to the north, the fire began to roar.

We put Tori in the carriage and Justin and Dominic between her legs. The babies never even woke up while we were moving them. Tori herself was more than half asleep. I worried that the carriage might break down with the extra weight, but it held. Travis, Harry, and Allie traded off pushing it.

Doe, we put atop the load on Bankoleʼs cart. She couldnʼt have been comfortable there, but she didnʼt complain. She was more awake than Tori, and she had been walking on her own most of the time since our encounter with the would-be kidnappers. She was a strong little kid—her fatherʼs daughter.

Grayson Mora helped push Bankoleʼs cart. In fact, once Doe was loaded aboard, Mora pushed the cart most of the time. The man wasnʼt likeable, but in his love for his daughter, he was admirable. At some point in the endless night, more smoke and ash than ever began to swirl around us, and I caught myself thinking that we might not make it. Without stopping, we wet shirts, scarves, whatever we had, and tied them around our noses and mouths.

The fire roared and thundered its way past us on the north, singeing our hair and clothing, making breathing a terrible effort. The babies woke up and screamed in fear and pain, then choked and almost brought me down. Tori, crying herself with their pain and her own, held on to them and would not let them struggle out of the carriage.

I thought we would die. I believed there was no way for us to survive this sea of fire, hot wind, smoke, and ash. I saw people—strangers—fall, and we left them lying on the highway, waiting to burn. I stopped looking back. In the roar of the fire, I could not hear whether they screamed. I could see the babies before Natividad threw wet rags over them. I knew they were screaming. Then I couldnʼt see them, and it was a blessing. We began to run out of water.

There was nothing to do except keep going or burn. The terrible, deafening noise of the fire increased,

then lessened, and again, increased, then lessened. It seemed that the fire went north away from the road, then whipped back down toward us.

It teased like a living, malevolent thing, intent on causing pain and terror. It drove us before it like dogs chasing a rabbit. Yet it didnʼt eat us. It could have, but it didnʼt.

In the end, the worst of it roared off to the northwest. Firestorm, Bankole called it later. Yes. Like a tornado of fire, roaring around, just missing us, playing with us, then letting us live.

We could not rest. There was still fire. Little fires that could grow into big ones, smoke, blinding and choking smoke… No rest.

But we could slow down. We could emerge from the worst of the smoke and ash, and escape the lash of hot winds. We could pause by the side of the road for a moment, and gag in peace. There was a lot of gagging. Coughing and gagging and crying muddy tracks onto our faces. It was incredible. We were going to survive. We were still alive and together—scorched and miserable, in great need of water, but alive. We were going to make it.

Later, when we dared, we went off the road, unloaded my pack from Bankoleʼs cart, and dug out his extra water bottle. He dug it out. Heʼd told us he had it when he could have kept it for himself. “Weʼll reach Clear Lake sometime tomorrow,” I said. “Early tomorrow, I think. I donʼt know how far weʼve come or where we are now, so I can only guess that weʼll get there early. But it is there waiting for us tomorrow.”

People grunted or coughed and downed swallows from Bankoleʼs extra bottle. The kids had to be prevented from guzzling too much water. As it was, Dominic choked and began to cry again. We camped where we were, within sight of the road. Two of us had to stay awake on watch. I volunteered for first watch because I was in too much pain to sleep. I got my gun back from Natividad, checked to see that she had reloaded it—she had—and looked around for a partner.

“Iʼll watch with you,” Grayson Mora said.

That surprised me. I would have preferred someone who knew how to use a gun—someone I would trust with a gun.

“Iʼm not going to be able to sleep until you do,” he said. “Itʼs that simple. So letʼs both put our pain to good use.”

I looked at Emery and the two girls to see whether theyʼd heard, but they seemed to be already asleep. “All right,” I said. “Weʼve got to watch for strangers and fire. Give me a yell if you see anything unusual.” “Give me a gun,” he said. “If anybody comes close, I can at least use it to scare them.” In the dark, sure. “No gun,” I said. “Not yet. You donʼt know enough yet.”

He stared at me for several seconds, then went over to Bankole. He turned his back to me as he spoke to Bankole. “Look, you know I need a gun to do any guarding in a place like this. She doesnʼt know how it is. She thinks she does, but she doesnʼt.”

Bankole shrugged. “If you canʼt do it, man, go to sleep. One of us will take the watch with her.” “Shit.” Mora made the word long and nasty. “Shiiit. First time I saw her, I knew she was a man. Just didnʼt know she was the only man here.”

Absolute silence.

Doe Mora saved the situation to the degree that it could be saved. At that moment she stepped up behind her father and tapped him on the back. He spun around, more than ready to fight, spun with such speed and fury that the little girl squealed and jumped back.

“What the hell are you doing up!” he shouted. “What do you want!”

Frightened, the little girl just stared at him. After a moment, she extended her hand, offering a pomegranate. “Zahra said we could have this,” she whispered. “Would you cut it?”

Good thinking, Zahra! I didnʼt turn to look at her, but I was aware of her watching. By now, everyone still awake was watching.

“Everyoneʼs tired and everyoneʼs hurting,” I told him. “Everyone, not just you. But weʼve managed to keep ourselves alive by working together and by not doing or saying stupid things.”

“And if thatʼs not good enough for you,” Bankole added, in a voice low and ugly with anger, “tomorrow you can go out and find yourself a different kind of group to travel with—a group too goddamn macho to waste its time saving your childʼs life twice in one day.”

There must be something worthwhile in Mora. He didnʼt say anything. He took out his knife and cut the pomegranate into quarters for Doe, then kept half of it because she insisted that he was supposed to have half. They sat together and ate the juicy, seedy, red fruit, then Mora tucked Doe in again and found himself a perch where, gunless, he began his first watch.

He said nothing more about guns, and he never apologized. Of course he didnʼt leave us. Where would he go? He was a runaway slave. We were the best thing heʼd found so far—the best he was going to find as long as he had Doe with him.

We didnʼt reach Clear Lake the next morning. To tell the truth it was already the next morning when we went to sleep. We were too tired and sore to get up at dawn—which came early in the second watch. Only the need for water made us move out when we did—at a hot, smoky 11 A.M.

We found the corpse of a young woman when we got back to the road. There wasnʼt a mark on her, but she was dead.

“I want her clothes,” Emery whispered. She was near me or I wouldnʼt have heard her. The dead woman

was about her size, and dressed in a cotton shirt and pants that looked almost new. They were dirty, but far less so than Emeryʼs clothes.

“Strip her, then,” I said. “Iʼd help you, but Iʼm not bending too well this morning.”

“Iʼll give her a hand,” Allie whispered. Justin was asleep in his carriage with Dominic, so she was free to help with the ordinary, unspeakable things that we did now to live.

The dead woman had not even soiled herself in her dying. That made the job less disgusting than it could have been. Rigor mortis had set in, however, and stripping her was a job for two.

There was no one but us on this stretch of road, so Emery and Allie had all the time they needed. We had seen no other walkers yet this morning.

Emery and Allie took every scrap of clothing, including underwear, socks, and boots, though Emery thought the boots would be too big for her. No matter. If no one could wear them, she could sell them. In fact, it was the boots that yielded Emery the first cash she had ever owned. On the farm where she had been a slave, she had been paid only in company scrip, worthless except on the farm, and almost worthless there.

Stitched into the tongue of each of the dead womanʼs boots were five, folded one hundred-dollar bills—a thousand dollars in all. We had to tell her how little that was. If she were careful, and shopped only at the cheapest stores, and ate no meat, wheat, or dairy products, it might feed her for two weeks. It might feed both her and Tori for a week and a half. Still, it seemed riches to Emery.

Late that day, when we reached Clear Lake—much smaller than I had expected—we came across a tiny, expensive store, being run from the back of an old truck near a cluster of half-burned, collapsed cabins. It sold fruit, vegetables, nuts, and smoked fish. We all had to buy a few things, but Emery squandered too much money on pears and walnuts for everyone. She delighted in passing these around, in being able to give us something for a change. Sheʼs all right. Weʼll have to teach her about shopping and the value of money, but sheʼs worth something, Emery is. And sheʼs decided sheʼs one of us.

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 2027

Somehow, weʼve reached our new home—Bankoleʼs land in the coastal hills of Humboldt County. The highway—U.S. 101—is to the east and north of us, and Cape Mendocino and the sea are to the west. A few miles south are state parks filled with huge redwood trees and hoards of squatters. The land surrounding us, however, is as empty and wild as any Iʼve seen. Itʼs covered with dry brush, trees, and tree stumps, all far removed from any city, and a long, hilly walk from the little towns that line the highway. Thereʼs farming around here, and logging, and just plain isolated living. According to Bankole, itʼs best to mind your own business and not pay too much attention to how people on neighboring plots of land earn a living. If they hijack trucks on 101, grow marijuana, distill whisky, or brew up more complicated illegal substances… Well, live and let live.

Bankole guided us along a narrow blacktopped road that soon became a narrow dirt road. We saw a few cultivated fields, some scars left by past fires or logging, and a lot of land that seemed unused. The road all but vanished before we came to the end of it. Good for isolation. Bad for getting things in or out. Bad for traveling back and forth to get work. Bankole had said his brother-in-law had to spend a lot of time in various towns, away from his family. That was easier to understand now. Thereʼs no possibility here of coming home every day or two. So what did you have to do to save cash? Sleep in doorways or parks in town? Maybe it was worth the inconvenience to do just that if you could keep your family together and safe—far from the desperate, the crazy, and the vicious.

Or thatʼs what I thought until we reached the hillside where Bankoleʼs sisterʼs house and outbuildings were supposed to be.

There was no house. There were no buildings. There was almost nothing: A broad black smear on the hillside; a few charred planks sticking up from the rubble, some leaning against others; and a tall brick chimney, standing black and solitary like a tombstone in a picture of an old-style graveyard. A tombstone amid the bones and ashes.

25

! ! !

Create no images of God.

Accept the images

that God has provided.

They are everywhere,

in everything.

God is Change—

Seed to tree,

tree to forest;

Rain to river,

river to sea;

Grubs to bees,

bees to swarm.

From one, many;

from many, one;

Forever uniting, growing, dissolving—

forever Changing.

The universe

is Godʼs self-portrait.

EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2027

WEʼVE BEEN ARGUING ALL week about whether or not we should stay here with the bones and ashes. Weʼve found five skulls—three in what was left of the house and two outside. There were other scattered bones, but not one complete skeleton. Dogs have been at the bones—dogs and cannibals, perhaps. The fire happened long enough ago for weeds to begin to grow in the rubble. Two months ago? Three? Some of the far-flung neighbors might know. Some of the far-flung neighbors might have set the fire. There was no way to be certain, but I assumed that the bones belonged to Bankoleʼs sister and her family. I think Bankole assumed that, too, but he couldnʼt bring himself to just bury the bones and write off his sister. The day after we got here, he and Harry hiked back to Glory, the nearest small town that we had passed through, to talk to the local cops. They were, or they professed to be, sheriffʼs deputies. I wonder what you have to do to become a cop. I wonder what a badge is, other than a license to steal. What did it used to be to make people Bankoleʼs age want to trust it. I know what the old books say, but still, I wonder. The deputies all but ignored Bankoleʼs story and his questions. They wrote nothing down, claimed to know nothing. They treated Bankole as though they doubted that he even had a sister, or that he was who he said he was. So many stolen IDs these days. They searched him and took the cash he was carrying. Fees for police services, they said. He had been careful to carry only what he thought would be enough to keep them sweet-tempered, but not enough to make them suspicious or more greedy than they already were. The rest—a sizeable packet—he left with me. He trusted me enough to do that. His gun he left with Harry who had gone shopping.

Jail for Bankole could have meant being sold into a period of hard, unpaid labor—slavery. Perhaps if he had been younger, the deputies might have taken his money and arrested him anyway on some trumped-up charge. I had begged him not to go, not to trust any police or government official. It seemed to me such people were no better than gangs with their robbing and slaving.

Bankole agreed with me, yet he insisted on going.

“She was my little sister,” he said. “I have to try, at least, to find out what happened to her. I need to know who did this. Most of all, I need to know whether any of her children could have survived. One or more of those five skulls could have belonged to the arsonists.” He stared at the collection of bones. “I have to risk going to the sheriffʼs office,” he continued. “But you donʼt. I donʼt want you with me. I donʼt want them getting any ideas about you, maybe finding out by accident that youʼre a sharer. I donʼt want my sisterʼs death to cost you your life or your freedom.”

We fought about it. I was afraid for him; he was afraid for me, and we were both angrier than we had ever been at each other. I was terrified that he would be killed or arrested, and weʼd never find out what happened to him. No one should travel alone in this world.

“Look,” he said at last, “you can do some good here with the group. Youʼll have one of the four guns left here, and you know how to survive. Youʼre needed here. If the cops decide they want me, you wonʼt be able to do a thing. Worse, if they decide they want you, thereʼll be nothing I can do except take revenge, and be killed for it.”

That slowed me down—the thought that I might cause his death instead of backing him up. I didnʼt quite believe it, but it slowed me down. Harry stepped in then and said he would go. He wanted to anyway. He could buy some things for the group, and he wanted to look for a job. He wanted to earn some money.

“Iʼll do what I can,” he told me just before they left. “Heʼs not a bad old guy. Iʼll bring him back to you.” They brought each other back, Bankole a few thousand dollars poorer, and Harry still jobless—though they did bring back supplies and a few hand tools. Bankole knew no more than he had when he left about his sister and her family, but the cops had said they would come out to investigate the fire and the bones. We worried that sooner or later, they might show up. Weʼre still keeping a lookout for them, and weʼve hidden—buried—most of our valuables. We want to bury the bones, but we donʼt dare. Itʼs bothering Bankole. Bothering him a lot. Iʼve suggested we hold a funeral and go ahead and bury the bones. The hell with the cops. But he says no. Best to give them as little provocation as possible. If they came, they would do enough harm with their stealing. Best not to give them reason to do more.

Thereʼs a well with an old-fashioned hand pump under the rubble of an outbuilding. It still works. The solar-powered electric pump near the house does not. We couldnʼt stay here long without a dependable water source. With the well, though, itʼs hard to leave—hard to walk away from possible sanctuary—in spite of arsonists and cops.

Bankole owns this land, free and clear. Thereʼs a huge, half ruined garden plus citrus trees full of unripe fruit. Weʼve already been pulling carrots and digging potatoes here. There are plenty of other fruit and nut trees plus wild pines, redwoods, and Douglas firs. None of these last were very big. This area was logged sometime before Bankole bought it. Bankole says it was clear-cut back in the 1980s or 1990s, but we can make use of the trees that have grown since then, and we can plant more. We can build a shelter, put in a winter garden from the seed Iʼve been carrying and collecting since we left home. Granted, a lot of it is old seed, I hadnʼt renewed it as often as I should have while I was at home. Strange that I hadnʼt. Things kept getting worse and worse at home, yet I had paid less and less attention to the pack that was supposed to save my life when the mob came. There was so much else to worry about—and I think I was into my own brand of denial, as bad in its way as Coryʼs or Joanneʼs motherʼs. But all that feels like ancient history. Now was what we had to worry about. What were we going to do now?

“I donʼt think we can make it here,” Harry said earlier this evening as we sat around the campfire. There should be something cheerful about sitting around a campfire with friends and a full stomach. We even had meat tonight, fresh meat. Bankole took the rifle and went off by himself for a while. When he came back, he brought three rabbits which Zahra and I skinned, cleaned, and roasted. We also roasted sweet potatoes that we had dug out of the garden. We should have been content. Yet all we were doing was rehashing what had become an old argument over the past few days. Perhaps it was the bones and ashes just over the rise that were bothering us. We had camped out of sight of the burned area in the hope of recovering a little peace of mind, but it hadnʼt helped. I was thinking that we should figure out a way to capture a few wild rabbits alive and breed them for a sure meat supply. Was that possible? Why not, if we stay here? And we should stay.

“Nothing we find farther north will be any better or any safer than this,” I said. “It will be hard to live here, but if we work together, and if weʼre careful, it should be possible. We can build a community here.” “Oh, god, there she goes with her Earthseed shit again,” Allie said. But she smiled a little as she said it. That was good. She hadnʼt smiled much lately.

“We can build a community here,” I repeated. “Itʼs dangerous, sure, but, hell, itʼs dangerous everywhere, and the more people there are packed together in cities, the more danger there is. This is a ridiculous place to build a community. Itʼs isolated, miles from everywhere with no decent road leading here, but for us, for now, itʼs perfect.”

“Except that someone burned this place down last time,” Grayson Mora said. “Anything we build out here by itself is a target.”

“Anything we build anywhere is a target,” Zahra argued. “But the people out here before… Iʼm sorry, Bankole, I gotta say this: They couldnʼt have kept a good watch—a man and a woman and three kids. They would have worked hard all day, then slept all night. It would have been too hard on just two grown people to try to sit up and watch for half the night each.”

“They didnʼt keep a night watch,” Bankole said. “Weʼll have to keep one, though. And we could use a couple of dogs. If we could get them as puppies and train them to guard—”

“Give meat to dogs?” Mora demanded, outraged.

“Not soon.” Bankole shrugged. “Not until we have enough for ourselves. But if we can get dogs, theyʼll help us keep the rest of our goods.”

“I wouldnʼt give a dog nothing but a bullet or a rock,” Mora said. “I saw dogs eat a woman once.” “There are no jobs in that town Bankole and I went to,” Harry said. “There was nothing. Not even work for room and board. I asked all over town. No one even knew of anything.”

I frowned. “The towns around here are all close to the highway,” I said. “They must get a lot of people passing through, looking for a place to settle—or maybe a place to rob, rape, kill. The locals wouldnʼt welcome new people. They wouldnʼt trust anyone they didnʼt know.”

Harry looked from me to Bankole.

“Sheʼs right,” Bankole said. “My brother-in-law had a hard time before people began to get used to him, and he moved up here before things got so bad. He knew plumbing, carpentry, electrical work, and motor vehicle mechanics. Of course, it didnʼt help that he was black. Being white might help you win people over

faster than he did. I think, though, that any serious money we make here will come from the land. Food is gold these days, and we can grow food here. We have guns to protect ourselves, so we can sell our crops in nearby towns or on the highway.”

“If we survive long enough to grow anything to sell,” Mora muttered. “If thereʼs enough water, if the bugs donʼt eat our crops, if no one burns us out the way they did those people over the hill, if, if, if!” Allie sighed. “Shit, itʼs if, if, if anywhere you go. This place isnʼt so bad.” She was sitting on her sleepsack, holding the sleeping Justinʼs head in her lap. As she spoke, she stroked the boyʼs hair. It occurred to me, not for the first time, that no matter how tough Allie tried to seem, that little boy was the key to her. Children were the keys to most of the adults present.

“There are no guarantees anywhere,” I agreed. “But if weʼre willing to work, our chances are good here. Iʼve got some seed in my pack. We can buy more. What we have to do at this point is more like gardening than farming. Everything will have to be done by hand—composting, watering, weeding, picking worms or slugs or whatever off the crops and killing them one by one if thatʼs what it takes. As for water, if our well still has water in it now, in October, I donʼt think we have to worry about it going dry on us. Not this year, anyway.

“And if people threaten us or our crop, we kill them. Thatʼs all. We kill them, or they kill us. If we work together, we can defend ourselves, and we can protect the kids. A communityʼs first responsibility is to protect its children—the ones we have now and the ones we will have.”

There was silence for a while, people digesting, perhaps measuring it against what they had to look forward to if they left this place and continued north.

“We should decide,” I said. “We have building and planting to do here. We have to buy more food, more seed and tools.” It was time for directness: “Allie, will you stay?”

She looked across the dead fire at me, stared hard at me as though she hoped to see something on my face that would give her an answer.

“What seed do you have?” she asked.

I drew a deep breath. “Most of it is summer stuff—corn, peppers, sunflowers, eggplant, melons, tomatoes, beans, squash. But I have some winter things; peas, carrots, cabbage, broccoli, winter squash, onions, asparagus, herbs, several kinds of greens… We can buy more, and weʼve got the stuff left in this garden plus what we can harvest from the local oak, pine, and citrus trees. I brought tree seeds too: more oak, citrus, peach, pear, nectarine, almond, walnut, a few others. They wonʼt do us any good for a few years, but theyʼre a hell of an investment in the future.”

“So is a kid,” Allie said. “I didnʼt think I would be dumb enough to say this, but yeah, Iʼll stay. I want to build something, too. I never had a chance to build anything before.”

Allie and Justin were a yes, then.

“Harry? Zahra?”

“Of course weʼre staying,” Zahra said.

Harry frowned. “Wait a minute. We donʼt have to.”

“I know. But we are. If we can make a community like Lauren says and not have to hire out to strangers and trust them when they shouldnʼt be trusted, then we should do it. If you grew up where I did, youʼd know we should.”

“Harry,” I said, “Iʼve known you all my life. Youʼre the closest thing to a brother that I have left. You arenʼt really thinking about leaving, are you?” It wasnʼt the worldʼs best argument. He had been both cousin and lover to Joanne, and heʼd let her go when he could have gone with her.

“I want something of my own,” he said. “Land, a home, maybe a store or a small farm. Something thatʼs mine. This land is Bankoleʼs.”

“Yes,” Bankole said. “And youʼll be getting the use of it rent free—and all the water you need. What are those things going to cost you farther north—if you can get them at all farther north—if you can get yourself out of California.”

“But thereʼs no work here!”

“Thereʼs nothing but work here, boy. Work, and a lot of cheap land. How cheap do you think land will be up where you and all the rest of the world are heading?”

Harry thought about that, then spread his hands. “What Iʼm worried about is spending all our money here, then discovering we canʼt make it here.”

I nodded. “Iʼve thought about that, too, and it bothers me. But itʼs a possibility anywhere, you know. You could settle in Oregon or Washington, not be able to get a job, and run out of money. Or you could be forced to work under the conditions that Emery and Grayson found. After all, with rivers of people flowing north, looking for work, employers can take their pick, and pay what they feel like paying.”

Emery put her arm around Tori, who sat drowsing next to her. “You might be able to get a job as a driver,” she said. “They like white men to be drivers. If you can read and write, and if youʼd do the work, you might get hired.”

“I donʼt know how to drive, but I could learn,” Harry said. “You mean driving those big armored trucks, donʼt you?”

Emery looked confused. “Trucks? No, I mean driving people. Making them work. Pushing them to work faster. Making them do…whatever the owners says.”

Harryʼs expression had dissolved from hopeful to horrified to outraged. “Jesus God, do you think Iʼd do that! How could you think Iʼd do anything like that?”

Emery shrugged. It startled me that she could be indifferent about such a thing, but she seemed to be. “Some people think itʼs a good job,” she said. “Last driver we had, he used to do something with computers. I donʼt know what. His company went out of business and he got a job driving us. I think he liked it.”

“Em,” Harry said. He pitched his voice low and waited until she looked at him. “Are you telling me you believe Iʼd like a job pushing slaves around and taking away their children?”

She stared back, searching his face. “I hope not,” she said. And then, “Sometimes jobs like that are the only jobs—slave or slave driver. I heard that just on this side of the Canada border there are a lot of factories with jobs like that.”

I frowned. “Factories that use slave labor?”

“Yeah. Workers make things for companies in Canada or Asia. They donʼt get paid much, so they get into debt. They get hurt or sick, too. Their drinking waterʼs not clean and the factories are dangerous—full of poisons and machines that crush or cut you. But people think they can make some cash and then quit. I worked with some women who had gone up there, taken a look, and come back.”

“And you were going up there?” Harry demanded.

“Not to work in those places. The women warned me.”

“Iʼve heard of places like that,” Bankole said. “They were supposed to provide jobs for that northward flowing river of people. President Donnerʼs all for them. The workers are more throw-aways than slaves. They breathe toxic fumes or drink contaminated water or get caught in unshielded machinery… It doesnʼt matter. Theyʼre easy to replace—thousands of jobless for every job.”

“Borderworks,” Mora said. “Not all of them are that bad. I heard some pay cash wages, not company scrip.”

“Is that where you want to go?” I asked. “Or do you want to stay here?”

He looked down at Doe who was still nibbling at a piece of sweet potato. “I want to stay here,” he said, surprising me. “Iʼm not sure you have a hope in hell of building anything here, but youʼre just crazy enough to make it work.” And if it didnʼt work, heʼd be no worse off than he was when he escaped slavery. He could rob someone and continue his journey north. Or maybe not. Iʼd been thinking about Mora. He did a lot to keep people away from him—keep them from knowing too much about him, keep them from seeing what he was feeling, or that he was feeling anything—a male sharer, desperate to hide his terrible vulnerability? Sharing would be harder on a man. What would my brothers have been like as sharers? Odd that I hadnʼt thought of that before.

“Iʼm glad youʼre staying,” I said. “We need you.” I looked at Travis and Natividad. “We need you guys, too. Youʼre staying, arenʼt you?”

“You know we are,” Travis said. “Although I think I agree more than I want to with Mora. Iʼm not sure we have a prayer of succeeding here.”

“Weʼll have whatever we can shape,” I said. And I turned to face Harry. He and Zahra had been whispering together. Now he looked at me.

“Moraʼs right,” he said. “Youʼre nuts.”

I sighed.

“But this is a crazy time,” he continued. “Maybe youʼre what the time needs—or what we need. Iʼll stay. I may be sorry for it, but Iʼll stay.”

Now the decision is acknowledged, and we can stop arguing about it. Tomorrow weʼll begin to prepare a winter garden. Next week, several of us will go into town to buy tools, more seed, supplies. Also, itʼs time we began to build a shelter. There are trees enough in the area, and we can dig into the ground and into the hills. Mora says heʼs built slave cabins before. Says heʼs eager to build something better, something fit for human beings. Besides, this far north and this near the coast, we might get some rain.

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 10, 2027

Today we had a funeral for Bankoleʼs dead—the five people who died in the fire. The cops never came. At last Bankole has decided that they arenʼt going to come, and that itʼs time his sister and her family had a decent burial. We collected all the bones that we could find, and yesterday, Natividad wrapped them in a shawl that she had knitted years ago. It was the most beautiful thing she owned.

“A thing like that should serve the living,” Bankole said when she offered it.

“You are living,” Natividad said. “I like you. I wish I could have met your sister.”

He looked at her for a while. Then he took the shawl and hugged her. Then, beginning to cry, he went off by himself into the trees, out of our sight. I let him alone for an hour or so, then went after him. I found him, sitting on a fallen log, wiping his face. I sat with him for some time, saying nothing. After a while, he got up, waited for me to stand, then headed back toward our camp.

“I would like to give them a grove of oak trees,” I said. “Trees are better than stone—life commemorating life.”

He glanced back at me. “All right.”

“Bankole?”

He stopped, looked at me with an expression I could not read.

“None of us knew her,” I said. “I wish we had. I wish I had, no matter how much I would have surprised her.”

He managed a smile. “She would have looked at you, then looked at me, then, right in front of you, I think

she would have said, ʻWell, thereʼs no fool like an old fool.ʼ Once she got that out of her system, I think she would have gotten to like you.”

“Do you think she could stand…or forgive company now?”

“What?”

I drew a deep breath and wondered about what I meant to say. It could go wrong. He could misunderstand. It still needed to be said.

“Weʼll bury your dead tomorrow. I think youʼre right to want to do it. And I think we should bury our dead as well. Most of us have had to walk away—or run—away from our unburned, un-buried dead. Tomorrow, we should remember them all, and lay them to rest if we can.”

“Your family?”

I nodded. “Mine, Zahraʼs, Harryʼs, Allieʼs—both her son and her sister—maybe Emeryʼs sons, maybe others that I donʼt know about. Mora doesnʼt talk about himself much, but he must have losses. Doeʼs mother, perhaps.”

“How do you want to do it?” he asked.

“Each of us will have to bury our own dead. We knew them. We can find the words.”

Words from the Bible, perhaps?

“Any words, memories, quotations, thoughts, songs… My father had a funeral, even though we never found his body. But my three youngest brothers and my stepmother had nothing. Zahra saw them die, or I wouldnʼt have any idea what happened to them.” I thought for a moment. “I have acorns enough for each of us to plant live oak trees to our dead—enough to plant one for Justinʼs mother, too. Iʼm thinking about a very simple ceremony. But everyone should have a chance to speak. Even the two little girls.”

He nodded. “I donʼt have any objection. It isnʼt a bad idea.” And a few steps later: “Thereʼs been so much dying. Thereʼs so much more to come.”

“Not for us, I hope.”

He said nothing for a while. Then he stopped and put his hand on my shoulder to stop me. At first he only stood looking at me, almost studying my face. “Youʼre so young,” he said. “It seems almost criminal that you should be so young in these terrible times. I wish you could have known this country when it was still salvageable.”

“It might survive,” I said, “changed, but still itself.”

“No.” He drew me to his side and put one arm around me. “Human beings will survive of course. Some other countries will survive. Maybe theyʼll absorb whatʼs left of us. Or maybe weʼll just break up into a lot of little states quarreling and fighting with each other over whatever crumbs are left. Thatʼs almost happened now with states shutting themselves off from one another, treating state lines as national borders. As bright as you are, I donʼt think you understand—I donʼt think you can understand what weʼve lost. Perhaps thatʼs a blessing.” “God is Change,” I said.

“Olamina, that doesnʼt mean anything.”

“It means everything. Everything!”

He sighed. “You know, as bad as things are, we havenʼt even hit bottom yet. Starvation, disease, drug damage, and mob rule have only begun. Federal, state, and local governments still exist—in name at least— and sometimes they manage to do something more than collect taxes and send in the military. And the money is still good. That amazes me. However much more you need of it to buy anything these days, it is still accepted. That may be a hopeful sign—or perhaps itʼs only more evidence of what I said: We havenʼt hit bottom yet.”

“Well, the group of us here doesnʼt have to sink any lower,” I said.

He shook his shaggy head, his hair, beard, and serious expression making him look more than a little like an old picture I used to have of Frederick Douglass.

“I wish I believed that,” he said. Perhaps it was his grief talking. “I donʼt think we have a hope in hell of succeeding here.”

I slipped my arm around him. “Letʼs go back,” I said. “Weʼve got work to do.”

So today we remembered the friends and the family members weʼve lost. We spoke our individual memories and quoted Bible passages, Earthseed verses, and bits of songs and poems that were favorites of the living or the dead.

Then we buried our dead and we planted oak trees.

Afterward, we sat together and talked and ate a meal and decided to call this place Acorn. A sower went out to sow his seed: and as he sowed, some fell by the way side; and it was trodden down, and the fowls of the air devoured it. And some fell upon a rock; and as soon as it was sprung up, it withered away because it lacked moisture. And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprang up with it, and choked it. And others fell on good ground, and sprang up, and bore fruit an hundredfold. The Bible

Authorized King James Version

St. Luke 8: 5-8