Water is very expensive here— worse than in Los Angeles or Ventura Counties. We all went to a water station this morning. Still no freeway watersellers for us.
On the road yesterday, we saw three dead men— a group together, young, unmarked, but covered with the blood they had vomited, their bodies bloated and beginning to stink. We passed them, looked at them, took nothing from their bodies. Their packs— if they’d had any— were already gone. Their clothes, we did not want. And their canteens— all three still had canteens— their canteens, no one wanted.
We all resupplied yesterday at a local Hanning Joss.
We were relieved and surprised to see it— a good dependable place where we could buy all we needed from solid food for the baby to soap to salves for skin chafed by salt water, sun, and walking. Natividad bought new liners for her baby carrier and washed and dried a plastic bag of filthy old ones. Zahra went with her into the separate laundry area of the store to wash and dry some of our filthy clothing. We wore our sea-washed clothing, salty, but not quite stinking. Paying to wash clothes was a luxury we could not often afford, yet none of us found it easy to be filthy. We weren’t used to it.
We were all hoping for cheaper water in the north. I even bought a second clip for the gun— plus solvent, oil, and brushes to clean the gun. It had bothered me, not being able to clean it before. If the gun failed us when we needed it, we could be killed. The new clip was a comfort, too. It gave us a chance to reload fast and keep shooting.
Now we lounged in the shade of pines and sycamores, enjoyed the sea breeze, rested, and talked. I wrote, fleshing out my journal notes for the week. I was just finishing that when Travis sat down next to me and asked his question:
“You believe in all this Earthseed stuff, don’t you?”
“Every word,” I answered.
“But…you made it up.”
I reached down, picked up a small stone, and put it on the table between us. “If I could analyze this and tell you all that it was made of, would that mean I’d made up its contents?”
He didn’t do more than glance at the rock. He kept his eyes on me. “So what did you analyze to get Earthseed?”
“Other people,” I said, “myself, everything I could read, hear, see, all the history I could learn. My father is— was— a minister and a teacher. My stepmother ran a neighborhood school. I had a chance to see a lot.”
“What did your father think of your idea of God?”
“He never knew.”
“You never had the guts to tell him.”
I shrugged. “He’s the one person in the world I worked hard not to hurt.”
“Dead?”
“She taught you about entropy?” Harry asked.
“She taught me to read and write,” Travis said.
“Then she taught me to teach myself. The man she worked for had a library— a whole big room full of books.”
“He let you read them?” I asked.
“He didn’t let me near them.” Travis gave me a humorless smile. “I read them anyway. My mother would sneak them to me.”
Of course. Slaves did that two hundred years ago.
They sneaked around and educated themselves as best they could, sometimes suffering whipping, sale, or mutilation for their efforts.
“Did he ever catch you or her at it?” I asked.
“No.” Travis turned to look toward the sea. “We were careful. It was important. She never borrowed more than one book at a time. I think his wife knew, but she was a decent woman. She never said anything.
She was the one who talked him into letting me marry Natividad.”
The son of the cook marrying one of the maids. That was like something out of another era, too.
“Then my mother died and all Natividad and I had was each other, and then the baby. I was staying on as gardener-handyman, but then that old bastard we worked for decided he wanted Natividad. He would try to watch when she fed the baby. Couldn’t let her alone. That’s why we left. That’s why his wife helped us leave. She gave us money. She knew it wasn’t Natividad’s fault. And I knew I didn’t want to have to kill the guy. So we left.”
In slavery when that happened, there was nothing the slaves could do about it— or nothing that wouldn’t get them killed, sold, or beaten.
I looked at Natividad who sat a short distance away, on spread out sleepsacks, playing with her baby and talking to Zahra. She had been lucky. Did she know?
How many other people were less lucky— unable to escape the master’s attentions or gain the mistress’s sympathies. How far did masters and mistresses go these days toward putting less than submissive servants in their places?
“I still can’t see change or entropy as God,” Travis said, bringing the conversation back to Earthseed.
“Then show me a more pervasive power than change,” I said. “It isn’t just entropy. God is more complex than that. Human behavior alone should teach you that much. And there’s still more complexity when you’re dealing with several things at once— as you always are. There are all kinds of changes in the universe.”
“Then they’re supposed to do what?” he demanded.
“Read a poem?”
