“They hit him in the head last night,” Zahra explained. “He got me away from the guy who was. .
. . Well, you know. He got me away, but they hurt him.”
“There’s a burned out garage where I slept last night,” I said. “It’s a long walk, but he can rest there.
We can all rest there.”
Zahra took my pillowcase and carried it. Maybe something in it could do her some good. We walked on either side of Harry and kept him from stopping or wandering off or staggering too much. Somehow, we got him to the garage.
15
Kindness eases Change.
EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING
SUNDAY, AUGUST 1, 2027
Harry slept most of the day today. Zahra and I took turns staying with him. He has a concussion, at least, and he needs time to heal. We haven’t talked about what we’ll do if he gets sicker instead of healing. Zahra doesn’t want to abandon him because he fought to save her. I don’t want to abandon him because I’ve known him all my life.
He’s a good guy. I wonder if there’s some way to get in touch with the Garfields. They would give him a home, or at least see that he has medical care.
But he doesn’t seem to be getting worse. He totters out to the fenced back yard to urinate. He eats the food and drinks the water that I give him. With no need for discussion, we’re eating and drinking sparingly from my supplies. They’re all we have.
Soon we’ll have to risk going out to buy more. But today, Sunday, is a day of rest and healing for us.
The pain of Harry’s headache and his bruised, beaten body are almost welcome to me. They’re distractions. Along with Zahra’s talking and crying for her dead daughter, they fill my mind.
Their misery eases my own, somehow. It gives me moments when I don’t think about my family.
Everyone is dead. But how can they be? Everyone?
Zahra has a soft, little-girl voice that I used to think was phony. It’s real, but it takes on a sandpaper roughness when she’s upset. It sounds painful, as though it’s abrading her throat as she speaks.
She had seen her daughter killed, seen the blue face who shot Bibi as Zahra ran, carrying her. She believed the blue face was enjoying himself, shooting at all the moving targets. She said his expression reminded her of a man having sex.
“I fell down,” she whispered. “I thought I was dead. I thought he had killed me. There was blood. Then I saw Bibi’s head drop to one side. A red face grabbed her from me. I didn’t see where he came from. He grabbed her and threw her into the Hsu house. The house was burning everywhere. He threw her into the fire.
“I went crazy then. I don’t know what I did.
Somebody grabbed me, then I was free, then somebody shoved me down and fell on me. I couldn’t get my breath, and he tore my clothes. Then he was on me, and I couldn’t do nothing. That’s when I saw your mother, your brothers… .
“Then Harry was there, and he pulled the bastard off me. He told me later that I was screaming. I don’t know what I was doing. He was beating up the guy he’d pulled off me when a new guy jumped him. I hit the new guy with a rock and Harry knocked the other one out. Then we got away. We just ran. We didn’t sleep. He hid between two unwalled houses down the street away from the fire until a guy came out with an ax and chased us away. Then we just wandered until we found you. We didn’t even really know each other before. You know. Richard never wanted us to have much to do with the neighbors-especially the white ones.”
I nodded, remembering Richard Moss. “He’s dead, you know,” I said. “I saw him.” I wanted to take the words back as soon as I’d said them. I didn’t know how to tell someone her husband was dead, but there must be a better, gentler way than that.
She stared at me, stricken. I wanted to apologize for my bluntness, but I didn’t think it would help. “I’m sorry,” I said in a kind of generic apology for everything. She began to cry, and I repeated, “I’m sorry.”
I held her and let her cry. Harry woke up, drank a little water, and listened while Zahra told how Richard Moss had bought her from her homeless mother when she was only fifteen— younger than I had thought— and brought her to live in the first house she had ever known. He gave her enough to eat and didn’t beat her, and even when her co-wives were hateful to her, it was a thousand times better than living outside with her mother and starving.
Now she was outside again. In six years, she had gone from nothing to nothing.
“Do you have someplace to go?” she asked us at last. Do you know anybody who still has a house?”
I looked at Harry. “You might be able to get into Olivar if you can walk there from here. The Garfields would take you in.”
He thought about that for a while. “I don’t want to,”
he said. “I don’t think there’s any more future in Olivar than there was in our neighborhood. But at least in our neighborhood, we had the guns.”
“For all the good it did us,” Zahra muttered.
“I know. But they were our guns, not hired gunmen.
No one could turn them against us. In Olivar, from what Joanne said, no one’s allowed to have a gun except the security force. And who the hell are they?”
“Company people,” I said. “People from outside Olivar.”
He nodded. “That’s what I heard, too. Maybe it will be all right, but it doesn’t sound all right.”
“It sounds better than starving,” Zahra said. “You guys have never missed a meal, have you?”
“I’m going north,” I said. “I planned to go anyway once my family was back on its feet. Now I have no family, and I’m going.”
