Parable of the Sower Page 8

  That’s if everything will just hold together for a few more years.

  SATURDAY, JUNE 7, 2025

  I’ve finally assembled a small survival pack for myself—a grab-and-run pack. I’ve had to dig some things I need out of the garage and the attic so that no one complains about my taking things they need. I’ve collected a hatchet, for instance, and two small, light, all-metal pots. There’s plenty of stuff like that around because no one throws anything away that has any possibility of someday being useful or salable.

  I packed my few hundred dollars in savings—almost a thousand. It might feed me for two weeks if I’m allowed to keep it, and if I’m very careful what I buy and where I buy it. I’ve kept up with, prices, questioning Dad when he and the other neighborhood men do the essential shopping. Food prices are insane, always going up, never down. Everyone complains about them.

  I found an old canteen and a plastic bottle both for water, and I resolved to keep them clean and full. I packed matches, a full change of clothing, including shoes in case I have to get up at night and run, comb, soap, toothbrush and toothpaste, tampons, toilet paper, bandages, pins, needles and thread, alcohol, aspirin, a couple of spoons and forks, a can opener, my pocket knife, packets of acorn flour, dried fruit, roasted nuts and edible seeds, dried milk, a little sugar and salt, my survival notes, several plastic storage bags, large and small, a lot of plantable raw seed, my journal, my Earthseed notebook, and lengths of clothesline. I stowed all this in a pair of old pillow cases, one inside the other for strength. I rolled the pillowcases into a blanket pack and tied it with some of the clothesline so that I could grab it and run without losing things, but I made it easy to open at the top so that I could get my journal in and out, change the water to keep it fresh, and less often, change the food and check on the seed. The last thing I wanted to find out was that instead of carrying plantable seed or edible food, I had a load of bugs and worms.

  I wish I could take a gun. I don’t own one and Dad won’t let me keep one of his in my room. I mean to try to grab one if trouble comes, but I may not be able to. It would be crazy to wind up outside with nothing but a knife and a scared look, but it could happen. Dad and Wyatt Talcott took us out for target practice today, and afterward I tried to talk Dad into letting me keep one of the guns in my room.

  “No,” he said, sitting down, tired and dusty, behind his desk in his cluttered office. “You don’t have anywhere to keep it safe during the day, and the boys are always in and out of your room.”

  I hesitated, then told him about the emergency pack that I had put together.

  He nodded. “I thought it was a good idea back when you first suggested it,” he said. “But, think, Lauren. It would be like a gift to a burglar. Money, food, water, a gun… Most burglars don’t find what they want all bundled up and waiting for them. I think we’d better make it a little harder for any burglar who comes here to get hold of a gun.”

  “It will just be a rolled up blanket mixed in with some other rolled or folded bed clothes in my closet,” I said. “No one will even notice it.”

  “No.” He shook his head. “No, the guns stay where they are.”

  And that’s that. I think he’s more worried about the boys snooping around than about burglars. My brothers have been taught how to behave around guns all their lives, but Greg is only eight and Ben is nine. Dad just isn’t ready to put temptation in their paths yet. Marcus at 11 is more trustworthy than a lot of adults, but Keith at almost 13 is a question mark. He wouldn’t steal from Dad. He wouldn’t dare. But he has stolen from me—only little things so far. He wants a gun, though, the way thirsty people want water. He wants to be all grown up—yesterday. So maybe Dad’s right. I hate his decision, but maybe he’s right.

  “Where would you go?” I asked him, changing the subject. “If we were forced out of here, where would you take us?”

  He blew out a breath, puffing up his cheeks for a second. “To the neighbors or to the college,” he said. “The college has temporary emergency accommodations for employees who are burned or driven out of their homes.”

  “And then?”

  “Rebuilding, fortifying, doing whatever we can do to live and be safe.”

  “Would you ever think about leaving here, heading north to where water isn’t such a problem and food is cheaper?”

  “No.” He stared into space. “My job down here is as secure as a job can be. There are no jobs up there. Newcomers work for food if they work at all. Experience doesn’t matter. Education doesn’t matter. There are just too many desperate people. They work their lives away for a sack of beans and they live on the streets.”

  “I heard it was easier up there,” I said. “Oregon, Washington, Canada.”

  “Closed,” he said. “You’ve got to sneak into Oregon if you get in at all. Even harder to sneak into Washington. People get shot every day trying to sneak into Canada. Nobody wants California trash.”

  “But people do leave. People are always moving north.”

  “They try. They’re desperate and they have nothing to lose. But I do. This is my home. Beyond taxes, I don’t owe a penny on it. You and your brothers have never known a hungry day here, and God willing, you never will.”

  In my Earthseed notebook, I’ve written,

  A tree

  Cannot grow

  In its parents’ shadows.

  Is it necessary to write things like that? Everyone knows them. What do they mean now, anyway? What does this one mean if you live in a cul-de-sac with a wall around it? What does it mean if you’re damned lucky to live in a cul-de-sac with a wall around it?

  MONDAY, JUNE 16, 2025

  There was a long report on the radio today about the findings of the big Anglo-Japanese cosmological station on the moon. The station, with its vast array of telescopes and some of the most sensitive spectroscopic equipment ever made has detected more planets orbiting nearby stars. That station has been detecting new worlds for a dozen years now, and there’s even evidence that a few of the discovered worlds may be life-bearing. I’ve listened to and read every scrap of information I could find on this subject, and I’ve noticed that there’s less and less argument against the likelihood that some of these worlds are alive. The idea is gaining scientific acceptance. Of course, no one has any idea whether the extrasolar life is anything more than a few trillion microbes. People speculate about intelligent life, and it’s fun to think about, but no one is claiming to have found anyone to talk to out there. I don’t care. Life alone is enough. I find it…more exciting and encouraging than I can explain, more important than I can explain. There is life out there. There are living worlds just a few light years away, and the United States is busy drawing back from even our nearby dead worlds, the moon and Mars. I understand why they are, but I wish they weren’t.

  I suspect that a living world might be easier for us to adapt to and live on without a long, expensive umbilical to Earth. Easier but not easy. Still, that’s something, because I don’t think there could be a multi-light-year umbilical. I think people who traveled to extrasolar worlds would be on their own—far from politicians and business people, failing economies and tortured ecologies—and far from help. Well out of the shadow of their parent world.

  SATURDAY, JULY 19, 2025

  Tomorrow, I’ll be sixteen. Only sixteen. I feel older. I want to be older. I need to be older. I hate being a kid. Time drags!

  Tracy Dunn has disappeared. She’s been depressed since Amy was killed. When she talked at all, it was about dying and wanting to die and deserving to die. Everyone kept hoping she would get over her grief—or her guilt—and get on with her life. Maybe she couldn’t. Dad talked with her several times, and I know he was worried about her. Her crazy family hasn’t been any help. They treat her the way she treated Amy: They ignore her.

  The rumor is that she went outside sometime yesterday. A group of Moss and Payne kids say they saw her go out of the gate just after they left school. No one has seen her since.
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  SUNDAY, JULY 20, 2025

  Here’s the birthday gift that came into my mind this morning as I woke up—just two lines:

  The Destiny of Earthseed

  Is to take root among the stars.

  This is what I was reaching for a few days ago when the story of the new planets being discovered caught my attention. It’s true, of course. It’s obvious.

  Right now, it’s also impossible. The world is in horrible shape. Even rich countries aren’t doing as well as history says rich countries used to do. President Donner isn’t the only one breaking up and selling off science and space projects. No one is expanding the kind of exploration that doesn’t earn an immediate profit, or at least promise big future profits. There’s no mood now for doing anything that could be considered unnecessary or wasteful. And yet,

  The Destiny of Earthseed

  Is to take root among the stars.

  I don’t know how it will happen or when it will happen. There’s so much to do before it can even begin. I guess that’s to be expected. There’s always a lot to do before you get to go to heaven.

  8

  ❏ ❏ ❏

  To get along with God,

  Consider the consequences of your behavior.

  EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING

  SATURDAY, JULY 26, 2025

  TRACY DUNN HAS NOT come home and has not been found by the police. I don’t think she will be. She’s only been gone for a week, but a week outside must be like a week in hell. People vanish outside. They go through our gate like Mr. Yannis did, and everyone waits for them, but they never come back—or they come back in an urn. I think Tracy Dunn is dead.

  Bianca Montoya is pregnant. It isn’t just gossip, it’s true, and it matters to me, somehow. Bianca is 17, unmarried, and out of her mind about Jorge Iturbe who lives at the Ibarra house and is Yolanda Ibarra’s brother.

  Jorge admits to being the father. I don’t know why they didn’t just get married before everything got so public. Jorge is 23, and he, at least, ought to have some sense. Anyway, they’re going to get married now. The Ibarra and Iturbe families have been feuding with the Montoyas for a week over this. So stupid. You’d think they had nothing else to do. At least they’re both Latino. No interracial feud this time. Last year when Craig Dunn who’s white and one of the saner members of the Dunn family was caught making love to Siti Moss who’s black and Richard Moss’s oldest daughter to boot, I thought someone was going to get killed. Crazy.

  But my point isn’t who’s sleeping with whom or who’s feuding. My point is—my question is—how in the world can anyone get married and make babies with things the way they are now?

  I mean, I know people have always gotten married and had kids, but now… Now there’s nowhere to go, nothing to do. A couple gets married, and if they’re lucky, they get a room or a garage to live in—with no hope of anything better and every reason to expect things to get worse.

  Bianca’s chosen life is one of my options. It’s not one that I intend to exercise, but it is pretty much what the neighborhood expects of me—of anyone my age. Grow up a little more, get married, have babies. Curtis Talcott says the new Iturbe family will get half-a-garage to live in after they marry. Jorge’s sister Celia Iturbe Cruz and her husband and baby have the other half. Two couples, and not one paying job among them. The best they could hope for would be to move into some rich people’s compound as domestic servants and work for room and board. There’s no way to save any money or ever do any better.

  And what if they wanted to go north, try for a better life in Oregon or Washington or Canada? It would be much harder to travel with a baby or two, and much more dangerous to try to sneak past hostile guards and over state lines or international borders with babies.

  I don’t know whether Bianca is brave or stupid. She and her sister are busy altering their mother’s old wedding dress, and everyone’s cooking and getting ready for a party as though these were the good old days. How can they?

  I like Curtis Talcott a lot. Maybe I love him. Sometimes I think I do. He says he loves me. But if all I had to look forward to was marriage to him and babies and poverty that just keeps getting worse, I think I’d kill myself.

  SATURDAY, AUGUST 2, 2025

  We had a target practice today, and for the first time since I killed the dog, we found another corpse. We all saw it this time—an old woman, naked, maggoty, half-eaten, and beyond disgusting.

  That did it for Aura Moss. She says she won’t do any more target shooting. Not ever. I tried talking to her, but she says it’s the men’s job to protect us anyway. She says women shouldn’t have to practice with guns.

  “What if you have to protect your younger sisters and brothers?” I asked her. She has to babysit them often enough.

  “I already know enough to do that,” she said.

  “You get rusty without practice,” I said.

  “I’m not going out again,” she insisted. “It’s none of your business. I don’t have to go!”

  I couldn’t move her. She was afraid, and that made her defensive. Dad said I should have waited until the memory of the corpse faded, then tried to convince her. He’s right, I guess. It’s the Moss attitude that gets me. Richard Moss lets his wives and daughters pull things like this. He works them like slaves in his gardens and rabbit raising operation and around the house, but he lets them pretend they’re “ladies” when it comes to any community effort. If they don’t want to do their part, he always backs them up. This is dangerous and stupid. It’s a breeding ground for resentment. No Moss woman has ever stood a watch. I’m not the only one who’s noticed.

  The two oldest Payne kids went with us for the first time. Bad luck for them. They weren’t scared off, though. Doyle and Margaret. There’s a toughness to them. They’re all right. Their uncle Wardell Parrish hadn’t wanted them to go. He had made nasty comments about Dad’s ego, about private armies and vigilantes, and about his taxes—how he had paid enough in his life to have a right to depend on the police to protect him. Blah, blah, blah. He’s a strange, solitary, whiny man. I’ve heard that he used to be wealthy. Dad agrees with me that he can’t be trusted. But he’s not Doyle and Margaret’s father, and their mother Rosalee Payne doesn’t like anyone telling her how to raise her five kids. The only power she has in the world is her authority over her children and her money. She does have a little money, inherited from her parents. Her brother has somehow lost his. So his trying to tell her what to do or what she shouldn’t let her kids do was a dumb move. He should have known better—though for the kids’ sake, I’m glad he didn’t.

  My brother Keith begged to go with us as usual. He’ll turn thirteen in a few days—August 14—and the thought of waiting two more years until he’s 15 must seem impossible to him. I understand that. Waiting is terrible. Waiting to be older is worse than other kinds of waiting because there’s nothing you can do to make it happen faster. Poor Keith. Poor me.

  At least Dad lets Keith shoot at birds and squirrels with the family BB gun, but Keith still complains. “It’s not fair,” he said today for the twentieth or thirtieth time. “Lauren’s a girl and you let her go. You always let her do things. I could learn to help you guard and scare off robbers…” He had once made the mistake of offering to help “shoot robbers” instead of scaring them off, and Dad all but preached him a sermon. Dad almost never hits us, but he can be scary without lifting a finger.

  Keith didn’t go today, of course. And our practice went all right until we found the corpse. We didn’t see any dogs this time. Most upsetting to me, though, there were a few more rag, stick, cardboard, and palm frond shacks along the way into the hills along River Street. There always seem to be more. They’ve never bothered us beyond begging and cursing, but they always stare so. It gets harder to ride past them. They’re living skeletons, some of them. Skin and bones and a few teeth. They eat whatever they can find up there.

  Sometimes I dream about the way they stare at us.

  Back at
home, my brother Keith slipped out of the neighborhood—out through the front gates and away. He stole Cory’s key and took off on his own. Dad and I didn’t know until we got home. Keith was still gone, and by then Cory knew he must be outside. She had checked with others in the neighborhood and two of the Dunn kids, twins Allison and Marie, age six, said they saw him go out the gate. That was when Cory went home and discovered that her key was gone.

  Dad, tired and angry and scared, was going to go right back out to look for him, but Keith got home just as Dad was leaving. Cory, Marcus, and I had gone to the front porch with Dad, all three of us speculating about where Keith had gone, and Marcus and I volunteering to go with Dad to help search. It was almost dark.

  “You get back in that house and stay there,” Dad said. “It’s bad enough to have one of you out there.” He checked the submachine gun, made sure it was fully loaded.

  “Dad, look,” I said. I had spotted something moving three houses down—quick, shadowy movement alongside the Garfield porch. I didn’t know it was Keith. I was attracted by its furtiveness. Someone was sneaking around, trying to hide.

  Dad was quick enough to see the movement before it was hidden by the Garfield house. He got up at once, took the gun, and went to check. The rest of us watched and waited.

  Moments later Cory said she heard an odd noise in the house. I was too focused on Dad and what was going on outside to hear what she heard, or to pay any attention to her. She went in. Marcus and I were still on the porch when she screamed.

  Marcus and I glanced at each other, then at the front door. Marcus lunged for the door. I yelled for Dad. Dad was out of sight, but I heard him answer my call.

  “Come quick,” I shouted, then I ran into the house.

  Cory, Marcus, Bennett, and Gregory were in the kitchen, clustered around Keith. Keith was sprawled, panting, on the floor, wearing only his underpants. He was scraped and bruised, bleeding, and filthy. Cory knelt beside him, examining him, questioning him, crying.