Charlinder's Walk (4 page)

"About what it would be like to have a family the way you want?"

"The way I want to have a family is impossible, so, no, I haven't really thought about it," Charlinder answered, just as they reached the door of the hen house. One of the mental exercises his neighbors had enjoyed during his childhood was trying to figure out why his mother never had more children. He knew why, and Roy knew why, and there were good reasons why her explanation never made it outside of their cabin. The game lost popularity when Charlinder reached his adolescence, and faded away entirely when Lydia died, but it never failed to remind him that he was an oddity. He’d grown up as the only child in the family, while most other children had two or three siblings each. Now he was right at the age when most people started becoming parents, and since he had no sister, there would be no nephews or nieces for him to raise. Since he enjoyed being the odd duck of the village, most of his closest friends were young women, but since they all had brothers, none of them were about to adopt him, so he had long accepted that the children in his life would be his students.

"But if you got married, it wouldn't matter that you don't have a sister, because you could have children with your wife."

"So are you suggesting that I go live with the St. Pauls?"

"Of course not," Taylor answered, remarkably unruffled by Charlinder's curtness. "I'm saying our lot could learn something from them."

"You want us to start getting married and stop having avuncular families? Are you not happy with how your uncle raised you? Do you not trust your sister? Do you want to shove her off on some other guy, who thinks he owns her just because she does sex with him? Who then runs off and leaves her to raise the kids on her own when he gets tired of her? Is that what you want?" Charlinder demanded.

"But it doesn't go like that, so what's wrong with giving it a try?" asked Taylor. "Do you really think it's fair that we're not trusted to raise children with any woman except our sister, while half the time we don't even know who our own children are?"

"That’s a stupid question. Patriarchs
usually
know who their children are, but Paleolans always know how to count their families." They were on their way back to the cart now, and Charlinder was thoroughly irritated.

"But if you don't give your wife to other men, then there's nothing to worry about," Taylor argued.

As that was precisely the can of worms he'd been hoping not to open, he decided the gloves had to come off. "Look," said Charlinder, stopping on the road before they came any closer to other people. "Marriage and paternal family structure, as you're describing them, have no practical function over an avuncular system, except to support inheritance through the male line. Inheritance presupposes capitalism, which requires a certain level of division of labor, which requires a level of population density that we aren't likely to achieve for several hundred years," he explained, hoping to confuse Taylor with the polysyllabic onslaught. He figured that was more polite than bringing up the specter of the constant anxiety that ‘his’ woman
might be fucking someone else
.

"But the St. Pauls and all the other communities on this river use it, and it works for them."

"The other communities are trying to use a market system, which they may say works for them, but it doesn't mean their lives are any healthier or happier than ours."

"Char, you've never lived in any of those communities."

"Neither have you."

Taylor appeared slightly intimidated for a moment, and Charlinder thought, for that same moment, that the conversation was over. "It's not only family structure that's different," he began again. "The St. Pauls are also much more religious than we are."

Charlinder had realized, by this point, that he wasn't going to edge Taylor out of having this conversation. "Really. What do they do to show that they're more religious?"

"Most of the village meets to worship God at least once a week, and the people pray at least once a day. I mean, how many of us do that?"

"Not so many," answered Charlinder.

The conversation with Taylor, he could have let go. It was nothing he was in any mood to repeat, but also nothing that hadn't happened in his village before. He still couldn't shake this creeping suspicion that something was changing, and changing in a way that Eileen wouldn't like any more than he did.

Not long after the meeting with Taylor, Charlinder was at his daily after-lessons cleanup of the school when he had a visitor. Robert came in one day when there were no kids around, and that was unusual enough, because he rarely had any adults visit the schoolroom, especially if they were not parents of his students. The best he had ever gotten along with Robert was when they left each other alone. He couldn't imagine what Robert would want in the schoolroom after all the children had gone for the day. Maybe he'd just walked into the wrong part of the main cabin.

"What are you looking for?" asked Charlinder, when Robert came in.

"I want to ask you something," said Robert.

So he wasn't lost after all. The suspicion creeping in as before, but his curiosity also piqued, Charlinder replied, "I'm listening."

Robert sat down on Charlinder's stool. "Have you attended a Sermon recently?"

"I haven't attended a Sermon in years, but I am aware of the topics under discussion," Charlinder answered, hoping to achieve a tone that spoke of being more than satisfied with that arrangement.

"And do you teach the children about the Plague?"

"Yes, of course," he said, desperately wishing he had Sunny there with him. "First, they learn about it as part of their Biology education, and then we go through it again for History."

"Okay," said Robert. "So, first it's a Biology lesson. Do you give them the same story as we were told when we were their age?"

“Yes, it makes sense, so I use it."

"Have you ever considered that the Plague was more than just another contagious disease?"

“It was an extremely powerful one, I'll give it that."

"And have you ever wondered how such a powerful disease could evolve so quickly?"

"I've wondered, but all the scientists and doctors died before they could find out, so we'll probably never know. In the meantime, I try to teach the kids to stay healthy in the here and now."

"You'll probably never find out if you wait for a scientific explanation, but the real answer could be right in front of you, if you'll just accept it."

Picturing what Sunny would say to Robert if she were there, Charlinder responded, "If you mean one of the kids started the Plague, I'm afraid even their grandparents weren't yet around."

"Of course I don't mean the kids. I mean maybe the Plague was an act of God."

"You know what I think of any theory that uses God as its explanation."

"No I don't know what you think."

"Then you don't want to know."

"Is it really such a good idea to treat that explanation--I mean the materialist one--as the only one that could be right? All you have for it are the writings from that Woodlawn woman, and who's to say she knew better than anyone else?"

"At least Eileen was around to see the Plague happen, and took the time to write something down. Her version's good enough for me. At least it follows logic." Charlinder figured he had used his undeniable weapon with the last part; Robert would either back off, or be incited to even more zeal.

"But it doesn't follow logic," Robert argued. Charlinder thought it quite rich that he should be getting a lesson on logic from someone making an argument that could never be empirically defended, but he kept his mouth shut. "There are some things about the Plague that Eileen Woodlawn didn't understand. And yet she still acted like she had it all figured out."

This wasn’t the Sermon, this was the schoolroom. Before he could stop to think about where this was headed, Charlinder took the bait. “There have always been some things that science couldn't explain at first, but, given enough time and resources for research, they figured out eventually. During the Middle Ages, Europeans thought the Black Plague was brought about by Jews because they didn't understand how it came from rats and mosquitoes. (Well, that and they were closed-minded xenophobic pigs.) They persecuted and slaughtered a lot of innocent people before they could learn Jews had nothing to do with it."

"I'm not talking about rats and mosquitoes, though. Even if you put aside the way the disease worked--which you shouldn’t--she could never explain how all the survivors knew to come outside at the same time. How did she just happen to know it was safe to leave her house, while everyone else who avoided the Plague knew the same thing at the same time?"

"Except they didn't all leave their houses at the same time. Two people in one town left their houses on the same day and met three other people in the same town who'd already been out and about for some time. They found fifteen more people, in several other towns, who had already come outside. She didn't know whether more people came outside later. There's nothing miraculous about that. They had to come out some time, or they'd starve."

"Eileen Woodlawn didn't wait until she ran out of food, though. One day, she just knew it was safe to go outside. How did she know that? Materialism can't explain it."

"She hadn't seen or spoken to another person in months, she was stuck in her house with a terrible smell because her indoor plumbing no longer worked--they had indoor plumbing back then, remember--and she was so bored and lonely that one day she'd had enough. That's about psychology, not theology. Did you come in here to lecture me with your beliefs?" Charlinder demanded of this presumptuous interloper sitting on his stool in his schoolroom.

"No more than you’ve been lecturing me--" Robert began.

"And you should have thought about that before you came into the schoolroom, so get to the point," Charlinder interrupted.

Robert looked slightly alarmed, but quickly composed himself. "I came in to ask if you had tried or considered teaching about the Plague from a spiritual point of view, rather than just a scientific one," he explained, "And now I see you haven't."

"No, I haven't, so, now that we've gotten that straightened out, don't let me take up any more of your time."

"There's no need to get that attitude with me, Char. I have a lesson about God's role in the Plague for the kids, so maybe you'd let me give it to them," Robert explained.

At first, Charlinder wondered why Robert would think to ask for his permission to give his own lecture to the kids, until he realized what Robert meant.

"You mean, you want to give them that lesson here, during the school day?"

"Yes, as sort of a guest teacher."

Charlinder had one of his emotional moments in which he was so shocked by the incredible, presumptuous arrogance and rudeness of someone's behavior that his tongue tied itself in a knot and he could only open his mouth while trying to land on something to say. When he found his powers of speech, he chose his words very carefully, lest Robert should go around telling half the village about Charlinder's "attitude" before Charlinder could tell them about Robert's part in the conversation.

"If the kids want to learn about how God made the Plague, they can go to a Sermon, or you can try and round them up after school. I can't tell you what to tell the kids or not tell them, but don't ask to do it on my time."

"If that's how you really feel, then I pray for your soul," said Robert as he stood up.

"My soul can take care of itself," he said as Robert walked out.

After he finished his usual routine in the schoolroom, Charlinder wanted to go to Spinners' Square to vent his annoyances. Textile working always made him feel better when he was in a foul mood. There was something about the steady beat of his foot on the treadle, the sensation of the fiber in his hands, and the intervals of female laughter that soothed him even in the worst of times. When he came within view of the Square, however, he saw Robert's sister, Ruth, seated behind a wheel in the middle of Miriam, Sunny and Nadine. Charlinder didn't make any assumptions about her based on Robert--Yolande's own brother frequently annoyed her with his Faith, for example--but he knew that she was always involved in the Sermons, and that was enough. He walked rapidly past the Square before any of his friends could call out to him. Spinning would not do him any good that day. He would take the long way back to the main cabin and make some paper.

The next time Charlinder went to the Square, Ruth was there again, in the middle of Charlinder's friends, but this time, Miriam caught him before he could pretend he was going somewhere else.

"Char!" she called out, waiting until he came up to her. “Would you like to help us out?” she asked, gesturing towards the wheel Ruth was using.

"Excuse me!" Ruth protested. "I'm still here!"

"Only when Ruth is finished," said Charlinder.

"Good. Ruth, you’ve done enough here, you can go,” ordered Miriam.

"No, really," said Charlinder, noting the look on Ruth's face. "I'll come back later."

"No, you won't," Miriam declared. "Ruth, Char will relieve you so you can do something else.”

“Why can’t Char just pull up another wheel?” Ruth demanded, while Charlinder looked for the nearest escape route.

"He's a better spinner than you," said Miriam, which Charlinder was not so sure was true, "and you've been here long enough. I think your grandmother could use some help with the cooking."

"Yeah, at least my grandmother won't treat me like this," snarled Ruth, letting the end of her yarn disappear into the flyer as she stomped off.