Butler, Octavia - Parable of the Sower

“Normal,” I muttered. “I wonder what that is. Do you agree with your mother?”

“No. Donner hasn’t got a chance. I think he would fix things if he could, but Harry says his ideas are scary.

Harry says he’ll set the country back a hundred years.”

“My father says something like that. I’m surprised that Harry agrees.”

“He would. His own father thinks Donner is God.

Harry wouldn’t agree with him on anything.”

I laughed, distracted, thinking about Harry’s battles with his father. Neighborhood fireworks— plenty of flash, but no real fire.

“Why do you want to talk about this stuff,” Joanne asked, bringing me back to the real fire. “We can’t do anything about it.”

“We have to.”

“Have to what? We’re 15! What can we do?”

“We can get ready. That’s what we’ve got to do now.

Get ready for what’s going to happen, get ready to survive it, get ready to make a life afterward. Get focused on arranging to survive so that we can do more than just get batted around by crazy people, desperate people, thugs, and leaders who don’t know what they’re doing!”

She just stared at me. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I was rolling— too fast, maybe. “I’m talking about this place, Jo, this cul-de-sac with a wall around it. I’m talking about the day a big gang of those hungry, desperate, crazy people outside decide to come in.

I’m talking about what we’ve got to do before that happens so that we can survive and rebuild— or at least survive and escape to be something other than beggars.”

“Someone’s going to just smash in our wall and come in?”

“More likely blast it down, or blast the gate open. It’s going to happen some day. You know that as well as I do.”

“Oh, no I don’t,” she protested. She sat up straight, almost stiff, her lunch forgotten for the moment. I bit into a piece of acorn bread that was full of dried fruit and nuts. It’s a favorite of mine, but I managed to chew and swallow without tasting it.

“Jo, we’re in for trouble. You’ve already admitted that.”

“Sure,” she said. “More shootings, more breakins.

That’s what I meant.”

“And that’s what will happen for a while. I wish I could guess how long. We’ll be hit and hit and hit, then the big hit will come. And if we’re not ready for it, it will be like Jericho.”

She held herself rigid, rejecting. “You don’t know that! You can’t read the future. No one can.”

“You can,” I said, “if you want to. It’s scary, but once you get past the fear, it’s easy. In L.A. some walled communities bigger and stronger than this one just aren’t there any more. Nothing left but ruins, rats, and squatters. What happened to them can happen to us. We’ll die in here unless we get busy now and work out ways to survive.”

“If you think that, why don’t you tell your parents?

Warn them and see what they say.”

“I intend to as soon as I think of a way to do it that will reach them. Besides… . I think they already know. I think my father does, anyway. I think most of the adults know. They don’t want to know, but they do.”

“My mother could be right about Donner. He really could do some good.”

“No. No, Donner’s just a kind of human banister.”

“A what?”

“I mean he’s like…like a symbol of the past for us to hold on to as we’re pushed into the future. He’s nothing. No substance. But having him there, the latest in a two-and-a-half-century-long line of American presidents makes people feel that the country, the culture that they grew up with is still here— that we’ll get through these bad times and back to normal.”

“We could,” she said. “We might. I think someday we will. ” No, she didn’t. She was too bright to take anything but the most superficial comfort from her denial. But even superficial comfort is better than none, I guess. I tried another tactic.

“Did you ever read about bubonic plague in medieval Europe?” I asked.

She nodded. She reads a lot the way I do, reads all kinds of things. “A lot of the continent was depopulated,” she said. “Some survivors thought the world was coming to an end.”

“Yes, but once they realized it wasn’t, they also realized there was a lot of vacant land available for the taking, and if they had a trade, they realized they could demand better pay for their work. A lot of things changed for the survivors.”

“What’s your point?”

“The changes.” I thought for a moment. “They were slow changes compared to anything that might happen here, but it took a plague to make some of the people realize that things could change.”

“So?”

“Things are changing now, too. Our adults haven’t been wiped out by a plague so they’re still anchored in the past, waiting for the good old days to come back. But things have changed a lot, and they’ll change more. Things are always changing. This is just one of the big jumps instead of the little step-by-step changes that are easier to take. People have changed the climate of the world. Now they’re waiting for the old days to come back.”

“Your father says he doesn’t believe people changed the climate in spite of what scientists say. He says only God could change the world in such an important way.”

“Do you believe him?”

She opened her mouth, looked at me, then closed it again. After a while, she said, “I don’t know.”

“My father has his blind spots,” I said. “He’s the best person I know, but even he has his blind spots.”

“It doesn’t make any difference,” she said. “We can’t make the climate change back, no matter why it changed in the first place. You and I can’t. The neighborhood can’t. We can’t do anything.”

I lost patience. “Then let’s kill ourselves now and be done with it!”

She frowned, her round, too serious face almost angry. She tore bits of peel from a small navel orange. “What then?” she demanded. “What can we do?”

I put the last bite of my acorn bread down and went around her to my night table. I took several books from the deep bottom drawer and showed them to her. “This is what I’ve been doing— reading and studying these over the past few months. These books are old like all the books in this house. I’ve also been using Dad’s computer when he lets me-to get new stuff.”

Frowning, she looked them over. Three books on survival in the wilderness, three on guns and shooting, two each on handling medical emergencies, California native and naturalized plants and their uses, and basic living: log cabin-building, livestock raising, plant cultivation, soap making— that kind of thing. Joanne caught on at once.

“What are you doing?” she asked. “Trying to learn to live off the land?”

“I’m trying to learn whatever I can that might help me survive out there. I think we should all study books like these. I think we should bury money and other necessities in the ground where thieves won’t find them. I think we should make emergency packs-grab and run packs— in case we have to get out of here in a hurry. Money, food, clothing, matches, a blanket… . I think we should fix places outside where we can meet in case we get separated. Hell, I think a lot of things. And I know— I know!— that no matter how many things I think of, they won’t be enough. Every time I go outside, I try to imagine what it might be like to live out there without walls, and I realize I don’t know anything.”

“Then why— ”

“I intend to survive.”

She just stared.

“I mean to learn everything I can while I can,” I said.

“If I find myself outside, maybe what I’ve learned will help me live long enough to learn more.”