Keith used to play `funny’ tricks on me, though.”
“So…you faked everyone out. You must be a hell of an actor.”
“I had to learn to pretend to be normal. My father kept trying to convince me that I was normal. He was wrong about that, but I’m glad he taught me the way he did.”
“Maybe you are normal. I mean if the pain isn’t real, then maybe— ”
“Maybe this sharing thing is all in my head? Of course it is! And I can’t get it out. Believe me, I’d love to.”
17
Embrace diversity.
Unite—
Or be divided,
robbed,
ruled,
killed
By those who see you as prey.
Embrace diversity
Or be destroyed.
EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING
TUESDAY, AUGUST 3, 2027
(from notes expanded AUGUST 8)
There’s a big fire in the hills to the east of us. We saw it begin as a thin, dark column of smoke, rising into an otherwise clear sky. Now it’s massive— a hillside or two? Several buildings? Many houses?
Our neighborhood again?
We kept looking at it, then looking away. Other people dying, losing their families, their homes… .
Even when we had walked past it, we looked back.
Had the people with painted faces done this, too?
Zahra was crying as she walked along, cursing in a voice so soft that I could hear only a few of the bitter words.
Earlier today we left the 118 freeway to look for and finally connect with the 23. Now we’re on the 23 with charred overgrown wilderness on one side and neighborhoods on the other. We can’t see the fire itself now. We’ve passed it, come a long way from it, put hills between it and us as we head southward toward the coast. But we can still see the smoke. We didn’t stop for the night until it was almost dark and we were all tired and hungry.
We’ve camped away from the freeway on the wilderness side of it, out of sight, but not out of hearing of the shuffling hoards of people on the move. I think that’s a sound we’ll hear for the whole of our journey whether we stop in Northern California or go through to Canada. So many people hoping for so much up where it still rains every year, and an uneducated person might still get a job that pays in money instead of beans, water, potatoes, and maybe a floor to sleep on.
But it’s the fire that holds our attention. Maybe it was started by accident. Maybe not. But still, people are losing what they may not be able to replace. Even if they survive, insurance isn’t worth much these days.
People on the highway, shadowy in the darkness, had begun to reverse the flow, to drift northward to find a way to the fire. Best to be early for the scavenging.
“Should we go?” Zahra asked, her mouth full of dried meat. We built no fire tonight. Best for us to vanish into the darkness and avoid guests. We had put a tangle of trees and bushes at our backs and hoped for the best.
“You mean go back and rob those people?” Harry demanded.
On the other hand, my Earthseed verses had surprised him, and, I think, pleased him a little. I wasn’t sure whether he liked the writing or the reasoning, but he liked having something to read and talk about.
“Poetry?” he said this morning as he looked through the pages I showed him— pages of my Earthseed notebook, as it happened. “I never knew you cared about poetry.”
“A lot of it isn’t very poetical,” I said. “But it’s what I believe, and I’ve written it as well as I could.” I showed him four verses in all— gentle, brief verses that might take hold of him without his realizing it and live in his memory without his intending that they should. Bits of the Bible had done that to me, staying with me even after I stopped believing.
I gave to Harry, and through him to Zahra, thoughts I wanted them to keep. But I couldn’t prevent Harry from keeping other things as well: His new distrust of me, for instance, almost his new dislike. I was not quite Lauren Olamina to him any longer. I had seen that in his expression off and on all day. Odd.
Joanne hadn’t liked her glimpse of the real me either. On the other hand, Zahra didn’t seem to mind. But then, she hadn’t known me very well at home. What she learned now, she could accept without feeling lied to. Harry did feel lied to, and perhaps he wondered what lies I was still telling or living. Only time could heal that— if he let it.
We moved when he came back. He had found us a new campsite, near the freeway and yet private. One of the huge freeway signs had fallen or been knocked down, and now lay on the ground, propped up by a pair of dead sycamore trees. With the trees, it formed a massive lean-to. The rock and ash leavings of a campfire showed us that the place had been used before. Perhaps there had been people here tonight, but they had gone away to see what they could scavenge from the fire. Now we’re here, happy to get a little privacy, a view of the hills back where the fire is, and the security, for what it was worth, of at least one wall.
“Good deal!” Zahra said, unrolling her sleepsack and settling down on top of it. “I’ll take the first watch tonight, okay?”
It was okay with me. I gave her the gun and lay down, eager for sleep. Again I was amazed to find so much comfort in sleeping on the ground in my clothes. There’s no narcotic like exhaustion.
