and laziness, knowing we had the rest of today and all of tomorrow to do almost nothing. Natividad fed Dominic and the two of them drifted off to sleep. Allie followed her example with Justin, although preparing him a meal was a little more complicated. Both women had more reason to be tired and to need sleep than the rest of us, so we left them out when we drew lots for a watch schedule— one for day and night. We shouldn’t get too comfortable. Also, we agreed that no one should go off exploring or getting water alone. I thought the couples would soon start going off together— and I thought it was just about time for Bankole and me to have that talk.
I sat with him and cleaned our new handgun while he cleaned the rifle. Harry was on watch and needed my gun. When I went over to give it to him, he let me know he understood exactly what was going on between Bankole and me.
“Be careful,” he whispered. “Don’t give the poor old guy a heart attack.”
“And why should people bother about the Destiny, farfetched as it is? What’s in it for them?”
“A unifying, purposeful life here on Earth, and the hope of heaven for themselves and their children. A real heaven, not mythology or philosophy. A heaven that will be theirs to shape.”
“Or a hell,” he said. His mouth twitched. “Human beings are good at creating hells for themselves even out of richness.” He thought for a moment. “It sounds too simple, you know.”
“You think it’s simple?” I asked in surprise.
“I said it sounds too simple.”
“It sounds overwhelming to some people.”
“I mean it’s too…straightforward. If you get people to accept it, they’ll make it more complicated, more open to interpretation, more mystical, and more comforting.”
“Not around me they won’t!” I said.
“With you or without you, they will. All religions change. Think about the big ones. What do you think Christ would be these days? A Baptist? A Methodist? A Catholic? And the Buddha— do you think he’d be a Buddhist now? What kind of Buddhism would he practice?” He smiled. “After all, if `God is Change,’ surely Earthseed can change, and if it lasts, it will.”
I looked away from him because he was smiling.
This was all nothing to him. “I know,” I said. “No one can stop Change, but we all shape Change whether we mean to or not. I mean to guide and shape Earthseed into what it should be.”
“Perhaps.” He went on smiling. “How serious are you about this?”
The question drove me deep into myself. I spoke, almost not knowing what I would say. “When my father… disappeared,” I began, “it was Earthseed that kept me going. When most of my community and the rest of my family were wiped out, and I was alone, I still had Earthseed. What I am now, all that I am now is Earthseed.”
“What you are now,” he said after a long silence, “is a very unusual young woman.”
We didn’t talk for a while after that. I wondered what he thought. He hadn’t seemed to be bottling up too much hilarity. No more than I’d expected. He had been willing to go along with his wife’s religious needs. Now, he would at least permit me mine.
I wondered about his wife. He hadn’t mentioned her before. What had she been like? How had she died?
“Did you leave home because your wife died?” I asked.
He put down a long slender cleaning rod and rested his back against the tree behind him. “My wife died five years ago,” he said. “Three men broke in-junkies, dealers, I don’t know. They beat her, tried to make her tell where the drugs were.”
“Drugs?”
“They had decided that we must have something they could use or sell. They didn’t like the things she was able to give them so they kept beating her. She had a heart problem.” He drew in a long breath, then sighed. “She was still alive when I got home. She was able to tell me what had happened. I tried to help her, but the bastards had taken her medicine, taken everything. I phoned for an ambulance. It arrived an hour after she died. I tried to save her, then to revive her. I tried so damned hard… .”
I stared down the hill from our camp where just a glint of water was visible in the distance through the trees and bushes. The world is full of painful stories.
Sometimes it seems as though there aren’t any other kind and yet I found myself thinking how beautiful that glint of water was through the trees.
“I should have headed north when Sharon died,”
Bankole said. “I thought about it.”
“But you stayed.” I turned away from the water and looked at him. “Why?”
He shook his head. “I didn’t know what to do, so for some time I didn’t do anything. Friends took care of me, cooked for me, cleaned the house. It surprised me that they would do that. Church people most of them. Neighbors. More her friends than mine.”
I thought of Wardell Parrish, devastated after the loss of his sister and her children— and his house.
Had Bankole been some community’s Wardell Parrish? “Did you live in a walled community?” I asked.
“Yes. Not rich, though. Nowhere near rich. People managed to hold on to their property and feed their families. Not much else. No servants. No hired guards.”
“Sounds like my old neighborhood.”
“I suppose it sounds like a lot of old neighborhoods that aren’t there any more. I stayed to help the people who had helped me. I couldn’t walk away from them.”
“But you did. You left. Why?”
“Fire— and scavengers.”
