Olivar’s flat, sandy beach is already just a memory. So are the houses and businesses that used to sit on that beach. Like coastal cities all over the world, Olivar needs special help. It’s an upper middle class, white, literate community of people who once had a lot of weight to throw around. Now, not even the politicians it’s helped to elect will stand by it. The whole state, the country, the world needs help, it’s been told. What the hell is tiny Olivar whining about?
Somewhat richer and less geologically active communities are getting help— dikes, sea walls, evacuation assistance, whatever’s appropriate.
Olivar, located between the sea and Los Angeles, is getting an influx of salt water from one direction and desperate poor people from the other. It has a solar powered desalination plant on some of its flatter, more stable land, and that provides its people with a dependable supply of water.
But it can’t protect itself from the encroaching sea, the crumbling earth, the crumbling economy, or the desperate refugees. Even getting back and forth to work, for those few who can’t work at home, was becoming as dangerous for them as it is for our people— a kind of terrible gauntlet that has to be run over and over again.
Then the people of KSF showed up. After many promises, much haggling, suspicion, fear, hope, and legal wrangling, the voters and the officials of Olivar permitted their town to be taken over, bought out, privatized. KSF will expand the desalination plant to vast size. That plant will be the first of many. The company intends to dominate farming and the selling of water and solar and wind energy over much of the southwest— where for pennies it’s already bought vast tracts of fertile, waterless land. So far, Olivar is one of its smaller coastal holdings, but with Olivar, it gets an eager, educated work force, people a few years older than I am whose options are very limited.
Not as limited as ours, of course, but limited. And there’s all that formerly public land that they now control. They mean to own great water, power, and agricultural industries in an area that most people have given up on. They have long-term plans, and the people of Olivar have decided to become part of them— to accept smaller salaries than their socio-economic group is used to in exchange for security, a guaranteed food supply, jobs, and help in their battle with the Pacific.
There are still people in Olivar who are uncomfortable with the change. They know about early American company towns in which the companies cheated and abused people.
But this is to be different. The people of Olivar aren’t frightened, impoverished victims. They’re able to look after themselves, their rights and their property.
They’re educated people who don’t want to live in the spreading chaos of the rest of Los Angeles County. Some of them said so on the radio documentary we all listened to last night— as they made a public spectacle of selling themselves to KSF.
“Good luck to them,” Dad said. “Not that they’ll have much luck in the long run.”
“What do you mean?” Cory demanded. “I think the whole idea is wonderful. It’s what we need. Now if only some big company would want to do the same thing with Robledo.
“No,” Dad said. “Thank God, no.”
“You don’t know! Why shouldn’t they?”
“Robledo’s too big, too poor, too black, and too Hispanic to be of interest to anyone— and it has no coastline. What it does have is street poor, body dumps, and a memory of once being well-off— of shade trees, big houses, hills, and canyons. Most of those things are still here, but no company will want us.”
At the end of the program it was announced that KSF was looking for registered nurses, credentialed teachers, and a few other skilled professionals who would be willing to move to Olivar and work for room and board. The offer wasn’t put that way, of course, but that’s what it meant. Yet Cory recorded the phone number and called it at once. She and Dad are both teachers, both Ph.D’s. She was desperate to get in ahead of the crowd. Dad just shrugged and let her call.
She made a sharp, wordless sound of disgust. “You know nothing about the world. You think you have all the answers but you know nothing!”
I didn’t argue. There wasn’t much point in my arguing with her.
“I doubt that Olivar is looking for families of blacks and Hispanics, anyway,” Dad said. “The Balters or the Garfields or even some of the Dunns might get in, but I don’t think we would. Even if I were trusting enough to put my family into KSF’s hands, they wouldn’t have us.”
“We could try it,” Cory insisted. “We should! We wouldn’t be any worse off than we are now if they turn us down. And if we got in and we didn’t like it, we could come back here. We could rent the house to one of the big families here— charge them just a little, then— ”
“Then come back here jobless and penniless,” Dad said. “No. I mean it. This business sounds half antebellum revival and half science fiction. I don’t trust it. Freedom is dangerous, Cory, but it’s precious, too. You can’t just throw it away or let it slip away. You can’t sell it for bread and pottage.”
Cory stared at him— just stared. He refused to look away. Cory got up and went to their bedroom. I saw her there a few minutes later, sitting on the bed, cradling the urn of Keith’s ashes, and crying.
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2026
Marcus tells me the Garfields are trying to get into Olivar. He’s been spending a lot of time with Robin Balter and she told him. She hates the idea because she likes her cousin Joanne a lot better than she does her two sisters. She’s afraid that if Joanne goes away to Olivar, she’ll never see her again. I suspect she’s right.
I can’t imagine this place without the Garfields.
Joanne, Jay, Phillida… . We’ve lost individuals before, of course, but we’ve never lost a whole family. I mean… they’ll be alive, but…they’ll be gone.
I hope they’re refused. I know it’s selfish, but I don’t care. Not that it makes any difference what I hope.
Oh hell. I hope they get whatever will be best for their survival. I hope they’ll be all right.
At 13, my brother Marcus has become the only person in the family whom I would call beautiful.
Girls his age stare at him when they think he’s not looking. They giggle a lot around him and chase him like crazy, but he sticks to Robin. She’s not pretty at all— all skin and bones and brains— but she’s funny and sensible. In a year or two, she’ll start to fill out and my brother will get beauty along with all those brains. Then, if the two of them are still together, their lives will get a lot more interesting.
I’ve changed my mind. I used to wait for the explosion, the big crash, the sudden chaos that would destroy the
