Butler, Octavia - Parable of the Sower

“We’ll reach Clear Lake sometime tomorrow,” I said.

“Early tomorrow, I think. I don’t know how far we’ve come or where we are now, so I can only guess that we’ll get there early. But it is there waiting for us tomorrow.”

People grunted or coughed and downed swallows from Bankole’s 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.

“I’ll 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.

“I’m not going to be able to sleep until you do,” he said. “It’s that simple. So let’s both put our pain to good use.”

I looked at Emery and the two girls to see whether they’d heard, but they seemed to be already asleep.

“All right.” I said. “We’ve 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 don’t 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 doesn’t know how it is. She thinks she does, but she doesn’t.”

Bankole shrugged. “If you can’t 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 didn’t 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 didn’t turn to look at her, but I was aware of her watching. By now, everyone still awake was watching.

“Everyone’s tired and everyone’s hurting,” I told him.

“Everyone, not just you. But we’ve managed to keep ourselves alive by working together and by not doing or saying stupid things.”

“And if that’s 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 child’s life twice in one day.”

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 2027

Somehow, we’ve reached our new home— Bankole’s land in the coastal hills of Humbolt 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 I’ve seen. It’s 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. There’s farming around here, and logging, and just plain isolated living. According to Bankole, it’s 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. There’s 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 that’s what I thought until we reached the hillside where Bankole’s sister’s 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 ChangeŃ

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, dissolvingŃ

forever Changing.

The universe

is God’s self-portrait.

EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2027

We’ve been arguing all week about whether or not we should stay here with the bones and ashes.

We’ve 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 Bankole’s sister and her family. I think Bankole assumed that too, but he couldn’t 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, sheriff’s 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 Bankole’s age want to trust it. I know what the old books say, but still, I wonder.

The deputies all but ignored Bankole’s 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 sizable 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.