replace— thousands of jobless for every job.”
“Borderworks,” Mora said. “Not all of them are that bad. I heard some pay cash wages, not company script.”
“Is that where you want to go?” I asked. “Or do you want to stay here?”
He looked down at Doe who was still nibbling at a piece of sweet potato. “I want to stay here,” he said, surprising me. “I’m not sure you have a hope in hell of building anything here, but you’re just crazy enough to make it work.” And if it didn’t work, he’d be no worse off than he was when he escaped slavery. He could rob someone and continue his journey north. Or maybe not. I’d been thinking about Mora. He did a lot to keep people away from him-keep them from knowing too much about him, keep them from seeing what he was feeling, or that he was feeling anything— a male sharer, desperate to hide his terrible vulnerability? Sharing would be harder on a man. What would my brothers have been like as sharers? Odd that I hadn’t thought of that before.
“I’m glad you’re staying,” I said. “We need you.” I looked at Travis and Natividad. “We need you guys, too. “You’re staying, aren’t you?”
“You know we are,” Travis said. “Although I think I agree more than I want to with Mora. I’m not sure we have a prayer of succeeding here.”
“We’ll have whatever we can shape,” I said. And I turned to face Harry. He and Zahra had been whispering together. Now he looked at me.
“Mora’s right,” he said. “You’re nuts.”
I sighed.
“But this is a crazy time,” he continued. “Maybe you’re what the time needs— or what we need. I’ll stay. I may be sorry for it, but I’ll stay.”
Now the decision is acknowledged, and we can stop arguing about it. Tomorrow we’ll begin to prepare a winter garden. Next week, several of us will go into town to buy tools, more seed, supplies. Also, it’s time we began to build a shelter. There are trees enough in the area, and we can dig into the ground and into the hills. Mora says he’s built slave cabins before. Says he’s eager to build something better, something fit for human beings. Besides, this far north and this near the coast, we might get some rain.
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 10, 2027
Today we had a funeral for Bankole’s dead— the five people who died in the fire. The cops never came. At last Bankole has decided that they aren’t going to come, and that it’s time his sister and her family had a decent burial. We collected all the bones that we could find, and yesterday, Natividad wrapped them in a shawl that she had knitted years ago. It was the most beautiful thing she owned.
“A thing like that should serve the living,” Bankole said when she offered it.
“You are living,” Natividad said. “I like you. I wish I could have met your sister.”
He looked at her for a while. Then he took the shawl and hugged her. Then, beginning to cry, he went off by himself into the trees, out of our sight. I let him alone for an hour or so, then went after him.
I found him, sitting on a fallen log, wiping his face. I sat with him for some time, saying nothing. After a while, he got up, waited for me to stand, then headed back toward our camp.
“I would like to give them a grove of oak trees,” I said. “Trees are better than stone— life commemorating life.
He glanced back at me. “All right.”
“Bankole?”
He stopped, looked at me with an expression I could not read.
“None of us knew her,” I said. “I wish we had. I wish I had, no matter how much I would have surprised her.”
He managed a smile. “She would have looked at you, then looked at me, then, right in front of you, I think she would have said, `Well, there’s no fool like an old fool.’ Once she got that out of her system, I think she would have gotten to like you.”
“Do you think she could stand…or forgive company now?”
“No.” He drew me to his side and put one arm around me. “Human beings will survive of course.
Some other countries will survive. Maybe they’ll absorb what’s left of us. Or maybe we’ll just break up into a lot of little states quarreling and fighting with each other over whatever crumbs are left. That’s almost happened now with states shutting themselves off from one another, treating state lines as national borders. As bright as you are, I don’t think you understand— I don’t think you can understand what we’ve lost. Perhaps that’s a blessing.”
“God is Change,” I said.
“Olamina, that doesn’t mean anything.”
“It means everything. Everything!”
He sighed. “You know, as bad as things are, we haven’t even hit bottom yet. Starvation, disease, drug damage, and mob rule have only begun.
Federal, state, and local governments still exist— in name at least— and sometimes they manage to do something more than collect taxes and send in the military. And the money is still good. That amazes me. However much more you need of it to buy anything these days, it is still accepted. That may be a hopeful sign— or perhaps it’s only more evidence of what I just said: We haven’t hit bottom yet.”
“Well, the group of us here doesn’t have to sink any lower,” I said.
He shook his shaggy head, his hair, beard, and serious expression making him look more than a little like an old picture I used to have of Frederick Douglass.
“I wish I believed that,” he said. Perhaps it was his grief talking. “I don’t think we have a hope in hell of succeeding here.”
I slipped my arm around him. “Let’s go back,” I said.
“We’ve got work to do.”
