them to guard— ”
“Give meat to dogs?” Mora demanded, outraged.
“Not soon.” Bankole shrugged. “Not until we have enough for ourselves. But if we can get dogs, they’ll help us keep the rest of our goods.”
“I wouldn’t give a dog nothing but a bullet or a rock,”
Mora said. “I saw dogs eat a woman once.”
“There are no jobs in that town Bankole and I went to,” Harry said. “There was nothing. Not even work for room and board. I asked all over town. No one even knew of anything.”
I frowned. “The towns around here are all close to the highway,” I said. “They must get a lot of people passing through, looking for a place to settle— or maybe a place to rob, rape, kill. The locals wouldn’t welcome new people. They wouldn’t trust anyone they didn’t know.”
Harry looked from me to Bankole.
“She’s right,” Bankole said. “My brother-in-law had a hard time before people began to get used to him, and he moved up here before things got so bad. He knew plumbing, carpentry, electrical work, and motor vehicle mechanics. Of course, it didn’t help that he was black. Being white might help you win people over faster than he did. I think, though, that any serious money we make here will come from the land. Food is gold these days, and we can grow food here. We have guns to protect ourselves, so we can sell our crops in nearby towns or on the highway.”
“If we survive long enough to grow anything to sell,”
Mora muttered. “If there’s enough water, if the bugs don’t eat our crops, if no one burns us out the way they did those people over the hill, if, if, if!”
Allie sighed. “Shit, it’s if, if, if anywhere you go. This place isn’t so bad.” She was sitting on her sleepsack, holding the sleeping Justin’s head in her lap. As she spoke, she stroked the boy’s hair. It occurred to me, not for the first time, that no matter how tough Allie tried to seem, that little boy was the key to her. Children were the keys to most of the adults present.
“There are no guarantees anywhere,” I agreed. “But if we’re willing to work, our chances are good here.
I’ve got some seed in my pack. We can buy more.
What we have to do at this point is more like gardening than farming. Everything will have to be done by hand— composting, watering, weeding, picking worms or slugs or whatever off the crops and killing them one by one if that’s what it takes. As for water, if our well still has water in it now, in October, I don’t think we have to worry about it going dry on us. Not this year, anyway.”
“And if people threaten us or our crop, we kill them.
That’s all. We kill them, or they kill us. If we work together, we can defend ourselves, and we can protect the kids. A community’s first responsibility is to protect its children— the ones we have now and the ones we will have.”
There was silence for a while, people digesting, perhaps measuring it against what they had to look forward to if they left this place and continued north.
“We should decide,” I said. “We have building and planting to do here. We have to buy more food, more seed and tools.” It was time for directness: “Allie, will you stay?”
She looked across the dead fire at me, stared hard at me as though she hoped to see something on my face that would give her an answer.
“What seed do you have?” she asked.
I drew a deep breath. “Most of it is summer stuff-corn, peppers, sunflowers, eggplant, melons, tomatoes, beans, squash. But I have some winter things; peas, carrots, cabbage, broccoli, winter squash, onions, asparagus, herbs, several kinds of greens… . We can buy more, and we’ve got the stuff left in this garden plus what we can harvest from the local oak, pine, and citrus trees. I brought tree seeds too: more oak, citrus, peach, pear, nectarine, almond, walnut, a few others. They won’t do us any good for a few years, but they’re a hell of an investment in the future.”
“So is a kid,” Allie said. “I didn’t think I would be dumb enough to say this, but yeah, I’ll stay. I want to build something too. I never had a chance to build anything before.”
Allie, and Justin were a yes, then.
“Harry? Zahra?”
“Of course we’re staying,” Zahra said.
Harry frowned. “Wait a minute. We don’t have to.”
“I know. But we are. If we can make a community like Lauren says and not have to hire out to strangers and trust them when they shouldn’t be trusted, then we should do it. If you grew up where I did, you’d know we should.”
“Harry,” I said, “I’ve known you all my life. You’re the closest thing to a brother that I have left. You aren’t really thinking about leaving, are you?” It wasn’t the world’s best argument. He had been both cousin and lover to Joanne, and he’d let her go when he could have gone with her.
“I want something of my own,” he said. “Land, a home, maybe a store or a small farm. Something that’s mine. This land is Bankole’s.”
“Yes,” Bankole said. “And you’ll be getting the use of it rent free— and all the water you need. What are those things going to cost you farther north— if you can get them at all farther north— if you can get yourself out of California.”
“But there’s no work here!”
“Not to work in those places. The women warned me.”
“I’ve heard of places like that,” Bankole said. “They were supposed to provide jobs for that northward-flowing river of people. President Donner’s all for them. The workers are more throwaways than slaves. They breathe toxic fumes or drink contaminated water or get caught in unshielded machinery… . It doesn’t matter. They’re easy to
