saying stupid things.”
“And if that’s not good enough for you,” Bankole added, in a voice low and ugly with anger, “tomorrow you can go out and find yourself a different kind of group to travel with— a group too goddamn macho to waste its time saving your child’s life twice in one day.”
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 2027
Somehow, we’ve reached our new home— Bankole’s land in the coastal hills of Humbolt County. The highway— U.S. 101— is to the east and north of us, and Cape Mendocino and the sea are to the west. A few miles south are state parks filled with huge redwood trees and hoards of squatters. The land surrounding us, however, is as empty and wild as any I’ve seen. It’s covered with dry brush, trees, and tree stumps, all far removed from any city, and a long, hilly walk from the little towns that line the highway. There’s farming around here, and logging, and just plain isolated living. According to Bankole, it’s best to mind your own business and not pay too much attention to how people on neighboring plots of land earn a living. If they hijack trucks on 101, grow marijuana, distill whisky, or brew up more complicated illegal substances… . Well, live and let live.
Bankole guided us along a narrow blacktopped road that soon became a narrow dirt road. We saw a few cultivated fields, some scars left by past fires or logging, and a lot of land that seemed unused. The road all but vanished before we came to the end of it. Good for isolation. Bad for getting things in or out.
Bad for traveling back and forth to get work. Bankole had said his brother-in-law had to spend a lot of time in various towns, away from his family. That was easier to understand now. There’s no possibility here of coming home every day or two. So what did you have to do to save cash? Sleep in doorways or parks in town? Maybe it was worth the inconvenience to do just that if you could keep your family together and safe— far from the desperate, the crazy, and the vicious.
Or that’s what I thought until we reached the hillside where Bankole’s sister’s house and outbuildings were supposed to be.
There was no house. There were no buildings.
There was almost nothing: A broad black smear on the hillside; a few charred planks sticking up from the rubble, some leaning against others; and a tall brick chimney, standing black and solitary like a tombstone in a picture of an old-style graveyard. A tombstone amid the bones and ashes.
25
Create no images of God.
Accept the images
that God has provided.
They are everywhere,
in everything.
God is ChangeN
Seed to tree,
tree to forest;
Rain to river,
river to sea;
Grubs to bees,
bees to swarm.
From one, many;
from many, one;
Forever uniting, growing, dissolvingN
forever Changing.
The universe
is God’s self-portrait.
EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2027
We’ve been arguing all week about whether or not we should stay here with the bones and ashes.
We’ve found five skulls— three in what was left of the house and two outside. There were other scattered bones, but not one complete skeleton. Dogs have been at the bones— dogs and cannibals, perhaps.
The fire happened long enough ago for weeds to begin to grow in the rubble. Two months ago?
Three? Some of the far-flung neighbors might know.
Some of the far-flung neighbors might have set the fire.
There was no way to be certain, but I assumed that the bones belonged to Bankole’s sister and her family. I think Bankole assumed that too, but he couldn’t bring himself to just bury the bones and write off his sister. The day after we got here, he and Harry hiked back to Glory, the nearest small town that we had passed through, to talk to the local cops.
They were, or they professed to be, sheriff’s deputies. I wonder what you have to do to become a cop. I wonder what a badge is, other than a license to steal. What did it used to be to make people Bankole’s age want to trust it. I know what the old books say, but still, I wonder.
The deputies all but ignored Bankole’s story and his questions. They wrote nothing down, claimed to know nothing. They treated Bankole as though they doubted that he even had a sister, or that he was who he said he was. So many stolen IDs these days.
They searched him and took the cash he was carrying. Fees for police services, they said. He had been careful to carry only what he thought would be enough to keep them sweet-tempered, but not enough to make them suspicious or more greedy than they already were. The rest— a sizable packet-he left with me. He trusted me enough to do that. His gun he left with Harry who had gone shopping.
