We’ll have to.”
“You can come back here if things aren’t what you hope. Your grandparents and your aunt’s family will still be here.
“Harry will still be here,” she whispered, looking toward her house. I would have to stop thinking of it as the Garfield house. Harry and Joanne were at least as close as Curtis and I. I hadn’t thought about her leaving him— what that must be like. I like Harry Balter. I remember being surprised when he and Joanne first started going together. They’d lived in the same house all their lives. I had thought of Harry almost as her brother. But they were only first cousins, and against the odds, they had managed to fall in love. Or I thought they had. They hadn’t gone with anyone else for years. Everyone assumed they would get around to marrying when they were a little older.
“Marry him and take him with you,” I said.
“He won’t go,” she said in that same whisper. “We’ve talked and talked about it. He wants me to stay here with him, get married soon and go north. Just…go with no prospects. Nothing. It’s crazy.”
“Why won’t he go to Olivar?”
“He thinks the way your father does. He thinks Olivar’s a trap. He’s read about nineteenth and early twentieth century company towns, and he says no matter how great Olivar looks, all we’ll get from it in the end is debt and loss of freedom.”
I knew Harry had sense. “Jo,” I said, “you’ll be of age next year. You could stay here with the Balters until then and marry. Or you could talk your father into letting you marry now.”
“And then what? Go join the street poor? Stay and stuff more babies into that crowded house. Harry doesn’t have a job, and there’s no real chance of his getting one that pays money. Are we supposed to live on what Harry’s parents earn? What kind of future is that? None! None at all!”
Sensible. Conservative and sensible and mature and wrong. Very much in character for Joanne.
Or maybe I was the one who was wrong. Maybe the security Joanne will find in Olivar is the only kind of security to be had for anyone who isn’t rich. To me, though, security in Olivar isn’t much more attractive than the security Keith has finally found in his urn.
I picked a few more lemons and some oranges and wondered what she would do if she knew I was also planning to leave next year. Would she run to her mother again, frightened for me, and eager to have someone protect me from myself? She might. She wants a future she can understand and depend on-a future that looks a lot like her parents’ present. I don’t think that’s possible. Things are changing too much, too fast. Who can fight God?
We put baskets of fruit inside my back door on the porch, then headed for her house.
“What will you do?” she asked me as we walked.
“Are you just going to stay here? I mean…are you going to stay and marry Curtis?”
I shrugged and lied. “I don’t know. If I marry anyone, it will be Curtis. But I don’t know about marrying. I don’t want to have children here any more than you do. I know we’ll be staying here for a while longer, though. Dad won’t let Cory even apply to Olivar. I’m glad of that because I don’t want to go there. But there’ll be other Olivars. Who knows what I might wind up doing?” That last didn’t feel like a lie.
“You think there’ll be more privatized cities?” she asked.
“Bound to be if Olivar succeeds. This country is going to be parceled out as a source of cheap labor and cheap land. When people like those in Olivar beg to sell themselves, our surviving cities are bound to wind up the economic colonies of whoever can afford to buy them.”
“Oh, God, there you go again. You’ve always got a disaster up your sleeve.”
“I see what’s out there. You see it too. You just deny it.”
“Remember when you thought starving hordes were going to come crawling over our walls and we would have to run away to the mountains and eat grass?”
Did I remember? I turned to face her, first angry-furious—
then to my own surprise, sad. “I’ll miss you,” I said.
She must have read my feelings. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.
We hugged each other. I didn’t ask her what she was sorry for, and she didn’t say any more.
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2026
Dad didn’t come home today. He was due this morning.
I don’t know what that means. I don’t know what to think. I’m scared to death.
Cory called the college, his friends, fellow ministers, co-workers, the cops, the hospitals… .
Nothing. He isn’t under arrest or sick or injured or dead— at least not as far as anyone knows. None of his friends or colleagues had seen him since he left work early this morning. His bike was working all right. He was all right.
He had ridden off toward home with three co-workers who lived in other neighborhoods in our area. Each of these said the same thing: That they had left him as usual at River Street where it intersects Durant Road. That’s only five blocks from here. We’re at the tip-end of Durant Road.
So where is he?
Today a group of us, all armed, rode bicycles from home to River Street and down River Street to the college. Five miles in all. We checked side streets, alleys, vacant buildings, every place we could think of. I went. I took Marcus with me because if I hadn’t, he would have gone out alone. I had the Smith &
Wesson. Marcus had only his knife. He’s quick and agile with it, and strong for his age, but he’s never used it on anything alive. If anything had happened to him, I don’t think I would have dared to go home.
Cory is already out of her mind with worry. All this on top of losing Keith… . I don’t know. Everyone helped. Jay Garfield will be leaving soon, but that didn’t stop him from leading the search. He’s a good man. He did everything he could think of to find Dad.
