never in his life steal from a church. He was raised by a very religious uncle and aunt, now dead, and thanks to their early training, there were some things he just wouldn't do. But the thieves were said to be Black, and Day and his friends were Black, so Day and his friends were presumed guilty.
I found myself believing him. That may be stupid of me, but I like him, and he doesn't strike me as a liar or a church robber.
He says the church's security people swarmed over the dormitories, and the men awoke and ran in all directions. They were all free poor men. When trouble erupted, and there was no real profit to be had, most of them never thought of doing anything other than getting away—especially when the shooting started.
Day didn't have a gun. One of his friends did, but the three of them got separated. Then they all got caught.
He and 18 or 20 other men were caught, and all the Black ones went to jail. Some were charged with violent crimes— armed robbery and assault. The rest were charged with vagrancy—which is a far more serious crime than it once was. The vagrants were found guilty and indentured to the Church of Christian America. Day's friends were charged with felonies as part of the first group because they were found together and one had a gun. Day was in the vagrant group. He had been indentured to work for 30 days for the church. He had already been shifted around and forced to work for more than two months. They lashed him when he complained that his sentence was up. At first they said he could go free if he could prove he had a job waiting for him outside. Of course since he was a stranger to the area, and since he had no free time to look for a job, it was impossible for him to get outside work. Local vagrants, on the other hand, were, one by one, rescued by relatives and friends, who promised to either give them jobs or feed and house them so that they would no longer be vagrant.
Day had done construction work, painting, grounds-keeping, and janitorial work. He had been given a thorough physical examination, then been required to donate blood twice. He had been encouraged to offer to donate a kidney or a cornea, after which he could heal and go free. This terrified him. He refused, but he couldn't help knowing that his organs, and, in fact, his life could be taken from him at any time. Who would know? Who would care? He wondered why they had not killed him already.
Then they moved him to Camp Christian for reeducation. He was told that there was hope for him—that he could, if he chose, learn to be a servant of God and God's true church and a loyal citizen of the greatest country in the world. He said he was already a Christian. They said, in effect, 'Prove it.' They said he would be accepted among them when they judged him truly penitent and educated in the truths of the Bible.
Then Day quoted them Exodus 21:16—'And he that stealeth a man and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death.' Day was lashed for his choice of scripture, of course, and he was told that the people of Christian America well knew that the devil could quote scripture.
Most people don't know about the camps, Day says. He's learned from talking to other collared men that there are a few small camps like Camp Christian and at least two big ones—much bigger than Camp Christian. One of the big ones is up at an abandoned prison in Del Norte County and the other is down in Fresno County. People don't realize how free poor vagrants are being treated, but he's afraid that even if they did know, they wouldn't care. The likelihood is that people with legal residences would be glad to see a church taking charge of the thieving, drug-taking, drug-selling, disease-spreading, homeless free poor.
'Back when I was at home, my aunt and uncle would have felt like that,' Day said. 'We walk the highways and scrounge and scavenge and ask for work, and all of that reminds people that what's happened to us can happen to them. They don't like to think about stuff like that, so they get mad at us. They make the cops arrest us or run us out of town. They call us names and wish somebody would do something to make us disappear. And now, somebody is doing just that!'
He's right. There are plenty of people who would think the Church was doing something generous and necessary— teaching deadbeats to work and be good Christians. No one would see a problem until the camps were a lot bigger and the people in them weren't just drifters and squatters. As far as we of Earthseed are concerned, that's already happened, but who are we? Just weird cultists who practice strange rites, so no doubt there are nice, ordinary people who would be glad to see us taught to behave ourselves too.
How many people, I wonder, can be penned up and tormented—reeducated—before it begins to matter to the majority of Americans? How does this penning people up look to other countries? Do they know? Would they care? There are worse things happening here in the States and elsewhere, I know. There's war, for instance.
In fact, we are at war. The United States is at war with Alaska and Canada. People are calling it the Al-Can war. I know Jarret wanted a war, was working to get one started. But until Day told me, I hadn't realized it had begun. There have already been exchanges of missiles and a few vicious border battles. I told Allie about this later, and she thought about it for a moment.
'Who's winning?' she asked.
I shook my head. 'Day didn't tell me. Hell, I didn't ask.'
She shrugged. 'Yeah. It doesn't much matter to
