way. By accident or by intent, all his victIms were avenged.
Wardell Parrish felt called upon to tell the police about the big fight Dad and Keith had had last year.
He’d heard it, of course. Half the neighborhood had heard it. Family fights are neighborhood theater-and Dad, the minister, after all!
I know Wardell Parrish was the one who told the cops. His youngest niece Tanya let that much slip.
“Uncle Ward said he hated to mention it but… .”
Oh, I’ll bet he hated to mention it. Damned bastard!
But nobody backed him up. The cops went nosing around the neighborhood, but no one else admitted knowing anything about a fight. After all, they knew Dad didn’t kill Keith. And they knew the cops liked to solve cases by “discovering” evidence against whomever they decided must be guilty. Best to give them nothing. They never helped when people called for help. They came later, and more often than not, made a bad situation worse.
We had the service today. Dad asked his friend Reverend Robinson to take care of it. Dad just sat with Cory and the rest of us and looked bent and old. So old.
Cory cried all day, most of the time without making a sound. She’s been crying off and on since Wednesday. Marcus and Dad tried to comfort her.
Even I tried, though the way she looked at me…as though I had had something to do with Keith’s death, as though she almost hated me. I keep reaching out to her. I don’t know what else to do. Maybe in time, she’ll be able to forgive me for not being her daughter, for being alive when her son is dead, for being Dad’s daughter by someone else… ? I don’t know.
Dad never shed a tear. I’ve never seen him cry in my life. Today, I wish he would. I wish he could.
Curtis Talcott sort of hung around with me today, and we talked and talked. I guess I needed to talk, and Curtis was willing to put up with me.
11
Any Change may bear seeds of benefit.
Seek them out.
Any Change may bear seeds of harm.
Beware.
God is infinitely malleable.
God is Change.
EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17, 2026
We are coming apart.
The community, the families, individual family members… .We’re a rope, breaking, a single strand at a time.
There was another robbery last night— or an attempted robbery. I wish that was all. No garden theft this time. Three guys came over the wall and crowbarred their way into the Cruz house. The Cruz family, of course, has loud burglar alarms, barred windows, and security gates at all the doors just like the rest of us, but that doesn’t seem to matter. When people want to come in, they come in. The thieves used simple hand tools— crowbars, hydraulic jacks, things anyone can get. I don’t know how they disabled the burglar alarm. I know they cut the electrical and phone lines to the house. That shouldn’t have mattered since the alarm had back-up batteries. Whatever else they did, or whatever went wrong, the alarm didn’t go off. And after the thieves used the crowbar on the door, they walked into the kitchen and used it on Dorotea Cruz’s seventy-five-year-old grandmother. The old lady was a light sleeper and had gotten into the habit of getting up at night and brewing herself a cup of lemon grass tea. Her family says that’s what she was coming into the kitchen to do when the thieves broke in.
Then Dorotea’s brothers Hector and Rubin Quintanilla, came running, guns in hand. They had the bedroom nearest to the kitchen and they heard all the noise— the breakin itself and Mrs. Quintanilla being knocked against the kitchen table and chairs.
They killed two of the thieves. The third got away, perhaps wounded. There was a lot of blood. But old Mrs. Quintanilla was dead.
This is the seventh incident since Keith was killed.
More and more people are coming over our wall to take what we have, or what they think we have.
Seven intrusions into house or garden in less than two months— in an 11-household community. If this is what’s happening to us, what must it be like for people who are really rich— although perhaps with their big guns, private armies of security guards, and up to date security equipment, they’re better able to fight back. Maybe that’s why we’re getting so much attention. We have a few stealables and we’re not that well protected. Of the seven intrusions, three were successful. Thieves got in and out with something— a couple of radios, a sack of walnuts, wheat flour, corn meal, pieces of jewelry, an ancient TV, a computer… . If they could carry it, they made off with it. If what Keith told me is true, we’re getting the poorer class of thieves here. No doubt the tougher, smarter, more courageous thieves hit stores and businesses. But our lower-class thugs are killing us slowly.
Next year, I’ll be 18— old enough, according to Dad, to stand a regular night watch. I wish I could do it now. As soon as I can do it, I will. But it won’t be enough.
It’s funny. Cory and Dad have been using some of the money Keith brought us to help the people who’ve been robbed. Stolen money to help victims of theft. Half the money is hidden in our back yard in case of disaster. There has always been some money hidden out there. Now there’s enough to make a difference. The other half has gone into the church fund to help our neighbors in emergencies. It won’t be enough.
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 20, 2026
Something new is beginning— or perhaps something old and nasty is reviving. A company called Kagimoto, Stamm, Frampton, and Company— KSF-has taken over the running of a small coastal city called Olivar. Olivar, incorporated in the 1980s, is just one more beach/bedroom suburb of Los Angeles, small and well-to-do. It has little industry, much hilly, vacant land and a short, crumbling coastline. Its people, like some here in our Robledo neighborhood, earn salaries that would once have made them prosperous and comfortable. In fact, Olivar is a lot richer than we are, but since it’s a coastal city, its taxes are higher, and since some of its land is unstable, it has extra problems. Parts of it sometimes crumble into the ocean, undercut or deeply saturated by salt water. Sea level keeps rising with the warming climate and there is the occasional earthquake.
