Charlinder's Walk (3 page)

But anyway. Laura told me all about how my worldview is a religion just as much as Mark's, and how we segued into this part, I don't exactly remember, but she also told me she's trying to talk some sense into Mark. Good luck, Reverend, is all I can say. She has some interesting things to say about why an almighty God would want to kill nearly all of the people on Earth with a vicious disease, though; she's given this much more honest thought than the nut-job.

The part where she really bugged me--and this is the part where I'm worried she came to me with an ulterior motive--is when she started reasoning with me about my stance on children. She tells me it'll take some time before I can expect everyone else to take the need for birth control seriously, and I need to choose my battles. Choosing battles is fine, but is Leann, or some other girl, going to suffer damage from pregnancy before the rest of us get off our asses? Or will we have to see a baby die of malnutrition or exposure? Which one will it be, everyone? Then--this is the part that really caps it--she told me I need to make babies some day to do my part for this community. No matter how hard I work here, and how much I contribute, it won't really count unless I pass on my genes, is what I'm being told. I'm sick of hearing it. I don't want us to be the founders of another society of powerful men and the women who have their children. We have more potential than that. It’s not wrong of me to point that out.

Despite Laura's attempts at diplomacy, the nut-job and the curmudgeon continued to butt heads for another thirteen years. The remaining survivors moved to develop birth control methods after a mother of seven died in childbirth, and her loss was enough of a shock on Mark to get him to choose his battles with Eileen. They agreed to disagree about religion, and the fighting ceased after that point. But while Eileen ostensibly won the battle over the reproductive burden on the surviving women, the larger war merely became an undercurrent in the survivors' culture. Eileen's version was the lesson they learned from their schoolteachers, while Mark's version became an oral tradition passed down from storyteller to small children. The differences between their stories gave way to ebbs and flows of discussion and dispute around the village over the years. The interplay between inquiry and faith came and went with time; sometimes they went years without tension, and sometimes one couldn't go anywhere in the village beyond Spinners' Square without being asked what one thought of the latest Sermon on the Plague.

Charlinder had no interest in the oral tradition passed down from Mark's side, but even more, he had no patience for the thrust of his community's debate. The argument was always about why the world's human population was almost entirely wiped out between 2010 and 2012. He didn't care about why. Since he had taken over the teaching duties, he had been trying to encourage his students to ask what their ancestors' lives were like before the Plague occurred. If they could understand that, he argued, the issue of "why" might very well fall into place. Either way, they needed to know of the achievements, struggles and pitfalls of pre-Plague cultures, so they would know how to work toward the future.

Still, while the Faithful irritated him and the arguments bored him, he could not dismiss the oral tradition out of hand because no matter how logical Eileen's story of the Plague appeared, there were some things she could never adequately explain.

June 19, 2012

Everyone keeps asking me how I knew when it was okay to come outside.

It almost sounds like they're accusing me of something. No, that's not right, it's more like it's a challenge. Everyone keeps talking about how it's just so fascinating how we all knew to come outside by May 14th. The possibility that there were still some other survivors hiding out in their houses after the rest of us found each other doesn't seem to occur to anyone, but the point is, everyone keeps talking about how we knew it was safe to come outside, and they keep bringing this question to me like it's supposed to Mean Something to my ridiculous god-free self.

I'm kind of afraid to answer their question, because I don't know if it's what they want to hear, or what I want them to hear. I just remember that I woke up that morning and felt like someone was whispering in my ear. I could almost hear a voice saying, "Come outside, it's okay. It's all different now, but you'll be safe." I felt like someone was pulling back the covers on my bed and rubbing my back, which sounds really creepy now, but at the time it all made sense.

Why I had that hallucination at the same time as or briefly after everyone else knew the Plague was done, I can't explain and that would be fine by me except some people seem to think they can explain it. And to be quite honest, I don't think there were any survivors who came outside any later than I did, either. What makes me think that way is anyone’s guess, but whatever. We all agree that those of us who came outside when we found each other were the only ones who were going to come outside. We seem to have had some pretty epic timing for the most part, and I think it was mainly a matter of everyone reaching their limit at the same time. How many people could have lasted long enough to join us but instead blow-jobbed their firearms in the previous months, we'll probably never know.

The door opened, and Charlinder's uncle, Roy, came into the cabin. They looked so different that Charlinder sometimes wondered how it was possible that they were both direct descendants of his grandmother. Charlinder looked like someone had taken a shorter person by the ends and stretched him; everything looked elongated except for his hair, which was so coarse and curly that it stood out from his scalp no matter how close he cropped it, so he never bothered to crop it very close. He was darker of skin than most of his fellow Paleolans including his own family, and had inherited a large hooked nose from somewhere on his natural father’s side, as it wasn’t visible on his mother’s. His facial hair still grew in patchy, so he stayed clean-shaven all the time. Roy was several inches shorter and broader in the shoulders, with softer, graying hair starting to grow thin at the front. He had a broader face with a flatter profile and grew a full, dense beard that his only nephew envied.

"Hi there, Uncle," Charlinder said from his place reading Eileen's journal.

"Hi, Char," said Roy. "What are you doing?"

"Planning tomorrow's lessons."

"Are you planning lessons, or are you enjoying a day in the life of Eileen Woodlawn?" Roy asked.

"I'm looking for lesson material in her journal," Charlinder answered. It wasn't really true, but his uncle knew enough not to worry.

"How were the kids this morning?"

"Noisy as always."

"And what did you do after school?"

"The usual, went to Spinners' Square."

"Any news today?"

"Not really. Just a little visit from Yolande and Kenny."

"Those two," his uncle said knowingly.

"Yeah, those two."

"What were they scuffling about this time?"

"Kenny wants Yolande to knit him a sweater, and Yolande's in one of her moods."

"Kenny might as well bark up a tree. Otherwise, a slow day?"

"Slow day, yeah."

They kept on with their pursuits without saying anything; Charlinder with his reading, Roy sharpening his arrowheads, for some time until Charlinder decided not to let something rest.

"There was something about the Sermon last night," he said.

"Yeah? What was the Sermon about?"

"They're talking about the origins of the Plague again."

His uncle only looked at him blankly for a moment. "At least they don't have something worse to worry about," he said finally.

"But do you think there's anything to what they're saying?"

"Char, what did Eileen say about the religious version of those events?"

"She had a lot of unpleasant things to say about it."

"But what did she say that one time, when she got really angry, that the older woman who was a minister wasn't too happy about?"

"You mean when she said they were talking about the 'Great Big Grampa Up in the Sky'?" he recalled with her journal entries fresh in his mind.

"Yes, that. You don't have to say it out loud to any of the Faithful, but that’s what we’re dealing with."

Charlinder kept that much in mind, but something about that day kept him awake. The reason why the ideas espoused in some of the Sermons left him cold, particularly those regarding the Plague, was not that he was offended by the fact that some of his community believed in a supreme being that Eileen derided as the Great Big Grampa Up in the Sky. It was that, as shown in the history texts that Eileen brought into the survivor community, the greatest bringers of war, through all the centuries of civilization, were greed, racism, and belief system. They were not a civilization and would not be for a long time. Since most of the village's assets were public property, and everyone was responsible for making sure everyone else was fed, clothed and sheltered, economics were a non-division in their community for the foreseeable future. The body count of the Plague had blurred out racial separations all over the river valley when the survivors decided that working together to stay alive was more important than who’d done what to whom in their former lives. People like Charlinder, whose ancestors originated on at least three different continents (in his case, Europe, Africa and the Middle East), were the overwhelming majority rather than a curiosity and while variations remained, racial boundaries were impossible to delineate as they once were. Gender, age and creed were probably the only dividing factors they had.

Still, the question of God's will and the Plague had come up many times in Charlinder's lifetime and before, and it had never caused serious trouble, including that it had never kept him from getting a good night's sleep.

He knew there was no immediate danger of violence and destruction. His community was not about to bring about another round of Crusades as long as it was the only set of 150 people for miles in any direction. Their sense of religion was too poorly defined, the people were too close to each other, and if nothing else, their society was not yet organized enough to do that much damage. It was for the future, when they regained their population density and recreated the technological advancements and infrastructure from before the Plague, that they needed to worry. As the village schoolteacher, it was Charlinder's responsibility to prepare the community for the future by educating them with the skills and knowledge of the past. And didn't he do a good job with that? His community recognized and appreciated his efforts, even if they couldn't always persuade their children to behave themselves in his lessons.

Then he remembered something Miriam had said that afternoon in the Square. "Heaven forbid a guy should do anything productive in this place." Of course she wasn't saying Charlinder wasn't productive; quite the opposite. He could always be relied on to do something helpful, and only the village council, she reported, had any notions of interfering. But they said nothing about interfering with his teaching. Did Miriam think his teaching was not productive?

She could not have had anything against Charlinder's educational skills in particular, as he had only been teaching for less than two years, while Miriam was just past fifty and had finished her schooling years before he was born. She had never even gone near the schoolroom while he was at work. She said herself that the council had no problem with his teaching. Her oldest grandchild was one of his students, and the next would soon follow. That was the most connection she had with his post.

He could only imagine how personally she took responsibility for the upbringing of her own grandchildren. If she felt that Charlinder wasn't doing anything meaningful for her family, then surely she thought his teaching school was a waste of time.

Was that it? The Faithful were bringing up the Plague again, and Miriam was implying that she didn't see much value in his job. Was that all?

Chapter Three

Families

He helped unload the cart from the trading visit to the St. Paul's village the following afternoon. Among the goods exchanged was a large quantity of cheese from the Paleola sheep for a number of young hens from the St. Paul's hatchery. Charlinder helped Taylor carry the birds back to the hen house, and Taylor brought up a subject that Charlinder would have been happier not to discuss.

"The St. Paul's lifestyle is very different from ours, did you know that?" asked Taylor.

"Yes, I'm aware of that," said Charlinder, trying to sound as apathetic as possible.

"They don't have avuncular families like ours, they have steady, faithful marriages," Taylor explained.

"I'm sorry to hear that," Charlinder replied. The conversation was headed in an ominous direction already. Everyone in their village knew perfectly well they were the only settlement in the area with no tradition of marriage, and it never bothered them before. Why did Taylor want to bring it up with him now?

"But it's a good system. No child ever has to wonder who its father is, because their fathers are right there. Men raise their own children, not their sisters' children."

"Yes, that's a different arrangement from ours," Charlinder agreed. The way their families saw it was that family was built around whom you grew up with, rather than whom you were shagging, but it seemed that was a nuance that eluded Taylor.

"Have you ever thought about that, Char?"

"Have I ever thought about what?" he stalled, then immediately regretted it. He should have said that he'd thought about it and realized it was lunacy.