Parable of the Sower (21 page)

The gun was fully loaded now, and I wore it holstered, but half covered by my shirt. Harry bought himself a knife. The money he had snatched up as he ran from his burning house had not been enough to buy a gun. I could have bought a second gun, but it would have taken too much of my money, and we have a long way to go.

Zahra used the shoe money to buy herself a knife and a few personal things. I had refused my share of that money. She needed a few dollars in her pocket.

The day she and Harry use their knives, I hope they kill. If they don’t, I might have to, to escape the pain. And what will they think of that?

They deserve to know that I’m a sharer. For their own safety, they should know. But I’ve never told anyone. Sharing is a weakness, a shameful secret. A person who knows what I am can hurt me, betray me, disable me with little effort.

I can’t tell. Not yet. I’ll have to tell soon, I know, but not yet. We’re together, the three of us, but we’re not a unit yet. Harry and I don’t know Zahra very well, nor she us. And none of us know what will happen when we’re challenged. A racist challenge might force us apart. I want to trust these people. I like them, and…they’re all I have left. But I need more time to decide. It’s no small thing to commit yourself to other people.

“You okay?” Zahra asked.

I nodded.

“You look like hell. And you’re so damned poker-faced most of the time…”

“Just thinking,” I said. “There’s so much to think about now.”

She sighed her breath out in a near whistle. “Yeah. I know. But keep your eyes open. You get too wrapped up in your thinking, and you’ll miss things. People get killed on freeways all the time.”

❏ ❏ ❏

EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING

M
ONDAY
, A
UGUST
2, 2027
(cont. from notes expanded A
UGUST
8)

H
ERE ARE SOME OF THE
things I’ve learned today:

Walking hurts. I’ve never done enough walking to learn that before, but I know it now. It isn’t only the blisters and sore feet, although we’ve got those. After a while, everything hurts. I think my back and shoulders would like to desert to another body. Nothing eases the pain except rest. Even though we got a late start, we stopped twice today to rest. We went off the freeway, into the hills or bushes to sit down, drink water, eat dried fruit and nuts. Then we went on. The days are long this time of year.

Sucking on a plum or apricot pit all day makes you feel less thirsty. Zahra told us that.

“When I was a kid,” she said, “there were times when I would put a little rock in my mouth. Anything to feel better. It’s a cheat, though. If you don’t drink enough water, you’ll die no matter how you feel.”

All three of us walked along with seeds in our mouths after our first stop, and we felt better. We drank only during our stops in the hills. It’s safer that way.

Also, cold camps are safer than cheery campfires. Yet tonight we cleared some ground, dug into a hillside, and made a small fire in the hollow. There we cooked some of my acorn meal with nuts and fruit. It was wonderful. Soon we’ll run out of it and we’ll have to survive on beans, cornmeal, oats—expensive stuff from stores. Acorns are home-food, and home is gone.

Fires are illegal. You can see them flickering all over the hills, but they are illegal. Everything is so dry that there’s always a danger of campfires getting away from people and taking out a community or two. It does happen. But people who have no homes will build fires. Even people like us who know what fire can do will build them. They give comfort, hot food, and a false sense of security.

While we were eating, and even after we’d finished, people drifted over and tried to join us. Most were harmless and easily gotten rid of. Three claimed they just wanted to get warm. The sun was still up, red on the horizon, and it was far from cold.

Three women wanted to know whether two studs like Harry and me didn’t need more than one woman. The women who asked this may have been cold, considering how few clothes they had on. It’s going to be strange for me, pretending to be a man.

“Couldn’t I just roast this potato in your coals?” an old man asked, showing us a withered potato.

We gave him some fire and sent him away—and watched to see where he went, since a burning brand could be either a weapon or a major distraction if he had friends hiding. It’s crazy to live this way, suspecting helpless old people. Insane. But we need our paranoia to keep us alive. Hell, Harry wanted to let the old guy sit with us. It took Zahra and me together to let him know that wasn’t going to happen. Harry and I have been well-fed and protected all our lives. We’re strong and healthy and better educated than most people our age. But we’re stupid out here. We want to trust people. I fight against the impulse. Harry hasn’t learned to do that yet. We argued about it afterward, low voiced, almost whispering.

“Nobody’s safe,” Zahra told him. “No matter how pitiful they look, they can steal you naked. Little kids, skinny and big-eyed will make off with all your money, water, and food! I know. I used to do it to people. Maybe they died, I don’t know. But I didn’t die.”

Harry and I both stared at her. We knew so little about her life. But to me, at that moment, Harry was our most dangerous question mark.

“You’re strong and confident,” I said to him. “You think you can take care of yourself out here, and maybe you can. But think what a stab wound or a broken bone would mean out here: Disablement, slow death from infection or starvation, no medical care, nothing.”

He looked at me as though he wasn’t sure he wanted to know me anymore. “What, then?” he asked. “Everyone’s guilty until proven innocent? Guilty of what? And how do they prove themselves to you?”

“I don’t give a piss whether they’re innocent or not,” Zahra said. “Let them tend to their own business.”

“Harry, your mind is still back in the neighborhood,” I said. “You still think a mistake is when your father yells at you or you break a finger or chip a tooth or something. Out here a mistake—one mistake—and you may be dead. Remember that guy today? What if that happened to us?”

We had seen a man robbed—a chubby guy of 35 or 40 who was walking along eating nuts out of a paper bag. Not smart. A little kid of 12 or 13 snatched the nuts and ran off with them. While the victim was distracted by the little kid, two bigger kids tripped him, cut his pack straps, dragged the pack off his back, and ran off with it. The whole thing happened so fast that no one could have interfered if they’d wanted to. No one tried. The victim was unhurt except for bruises and abrasions—the sort of thing I had to put up with every day back in the neighborhood. But the victim’s supplies were gone. If he had a home nearby and other supplies, he would be all right. Otherwise, his only way of surviving might be to rob someone else—if he could.

“Remember?” I asked Harry. “We don’t have to hurt anyone unless they push us into it, but we don’t dare let our guard down. We can’t trust people.”

Harry shook his head. “What if I thought that way when I pulled that guy off Zahra?”

I held on to my temper. “Harry, you know I don’t mean we shouldn’t trust or help each other. We know each other. We’ve made a commitment to travel together.”

“I’m not sure we do know each other.”

“I am. And we can’t afford your denial. You can’t afford it.”

He just stared at me.

“Out here, you adapt to your surroundings or you get killed,” I said. “That’s obvious!”

Now he did look at me as though I were a stranger. I looked back, hoping I knew him as well as I thought I did. He had a brain and he had courage. He just didn’t want to change.

“Do you want to break off with us,” Zahra asked, “go your own way without us?”

His gaze softened as he looked at her. “No,” he said. “Of course not. But we don’t have to turn into animals, for godsake.”

“In a way, we do,” I said. “We’re a pack, the three of us, and all those other people out there aren’t in it. If we’re a good pack, and we work together, we have a chance. You can be sure we aren’t the only pack out here.”

He leaned back against a rock, and said with amazement, “You damn sure talk macho enough to be a guy.”

I almost hit him. Maybe Zahra and I would be better off without him. But no, that wasn’t true. Numbers mattered. Friendship mattered. One real male presence mattered.

“Don’t repeat that,” I whispered, leaning close to him. “Never say that again. There are other people all over these hills; you don’t know who’s listening. You give me away and you weaken yourself!”

That reached him. “Sorry,” he said.

“It’s bad out here,” Zahra said. “But most people make it if they’re careful. People weaker than us make it—if they’re careful.”

Harry gave a wan smile. “I hate this world already,” he said.

“It’s not so bad if people stick together.”

He looked from her to me and back to her again. He smiled at her and nodded. It occurred to me then that he liked her, was attracted to her. That could be a problem for her later. She was a beautiful woman, and I would never be beautiful—which didn’t bother me. Boys had always seemed to like me. But Zahra’s looks grabbed male attention. If she and Harry get together, she could wind up carrying two heavy loads northward.

I was lost in thought about the two of them when Zahra nudged me with her foot.

Two big, dirty-looking guys were standing nearby, watching us, watching Zahra in particular.

I stood up, feeling the others stand with me, flanking me. These guys were too close to us. They meant to be too close. As I stood up, I put my hand on the gun.

“Yeah?” I said. “What do you want?”

“Not a thing,” one of them said, smiling at Zahra. Both wore big holstered knives which they fingered.

I drew the gun. “Good deal,” I said.

Their smiles vanished. “What, you going to shoot us for standing here?” the talkative one said.

I thumbed the safety. I would shoot the talker, the leader. The other one would run away. He already wanted to run away. He was staring, open-mouthed, at the gun. By the time I collapsed, he would be gone.

“Hey, no trouble!” the talker raised his hands, backing away. “Take it easy, man.”

I let them go. I think it would have been better to shoot them. I’m afraid of guys like that—guys looking for trouble, looking for victims. But it seems I can’t quite shoot someone just because I’m afraid of him. I killed a man on the night of the fire, and I haven’t thought much about it. But this was different. It was like what Harry said about stealing. I’ve heard, “Thou shalt not kill,” all my life, but when you have to, you kill. I wonder what Dad would say about that. But then, he was the one who taught me to shoot.

“We’d better keep a damn good watch tonight,” I said. I looked at Harry, and was glad to see that he looked the way I probably had a moment before: mad and worried. “Let’s pass your watch and my gun around,” I told him. “Three hours per watcher.”

“You would have done it, wouldn’t you?” he asked. It sounded like a real question.

I nodded. “Wouldn’t you?”

“Yes. I wouldn’t have wanted to, but those guys were out for fun. Their idea of fun, anyway.” He glanced at Zahra. He had pulled one man off her, and taken a beating for it. Maybe the obvious threat to her would keep him alert. Anything that would keep him alert couldn’t be all bad.

I looked at Zahra, kept my voice very low. “You never went shooting with us, so I have to ask. Do you know how to use this?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Richard let his older kids go out, but he wouldn’t let me. Before he bought me, though, I was a good shot.”

Her alien past again. It distracted me for a moment. I had been waiting to ask her how much a person costs these days. And she had been sold by her mother to a man who couldn’t have been much more than a stranger. He could have been a maniac, a monster. And my father used to worry about future slavery or debt slavery. Had he known? He couldn’t have.

“Have you used a gun like this before?” I asked. I reengaged the safety and handed it to her.

“Hell, yeah,” she said, examining it. “I like this. It’s heavy, but if you shoot somebody with it, they go down.” She released the clip, checked it, reinserted it, rammed it home, and handed it back. “I wish I could have practiced with you all,” she said. “I always wanted to.”

Without warning, I felt a pang of loneliness for the burned neighborhood. It was almost a physical pain. I had been desperate to leave it, but I had expected it still to be there—changed, but surviving. Now that it was gone, there were moments when I couldn’t imagine how I was going to survive without it.

“You guys get some sleep,” I said. “I’m too wound up to sleep now. I’ll take the first watch.”

“We should gather more wood for the fire first,” Harry said. “It’s burning low.”

“Let it go out,” I said. “It’s a spotlight on us, and it messes up our night vision. Other people can see us long before we see them.”

“And sit here in the dark,” he said. It wasn’t a protest. At worst, it was grudging agreement. “I’ll take the watch after you,” he said, lying back and pulling up his sleepsack and positioning the rest of his gear to serve as a pillow. As an afterthought, he took off his wrist watch and gave it to me. “It was a gift from my mother,” he said.

“You know I’ll take care of it,” I told him.

He nodded. “You be careful,” he said, and closed his eyes.

I put the watch on, pulled the elastic of my sleeve down over it so that the glow of the dial wouldn’t be visible by accident, and sat back against the hill to make a few quick notes. While there was still some natural light, I could write and watch.

Zahra watched me for a while, then laid her hand on my arm. “Teach me to do that,” she whispered.

I looked at her, not understanding.

“Teach me to read and write.”

I was surprised, but I shouldn’t have been. Where, in a life like hers, had there been time or money for school. And once Richard Moss bought her, her jealous co-wives wouldn’t have taught her.