Parable of the Sower (7 page)

“I know, I know.” She sounded almost bored. “Things are bad. My mother is hoping this new guy, President Donner, will start to get us back to normal.”

“Normal,” I muttered. “I wonder what that is. Do you agree with your mother?”

“No. Donner hasn’t got a chance. I think he would fix things if he could, but Harry says his ideas are scary. Harry says he’ll set the country back a hundred years.”

“My father says something like that. I’m surprised that Harry agrees.”

“He would. His own father thinks Donner is God. Harry wouldn’t agree with him on anything.”

I laughed, distracted, thinking about Harry’s battles with his father. Neighborhood fireworks—plenty of flash, but no real fire.

“Why do you want to talk about this stuff,” Joanne asked, bringing me back to the real fire. “We can’t do anything about it.”

“We have to.”

“Have to what? We’re fifteen! What can we do?”

“We can get ready. That’s what we’ve got to do now. Get ready for what’s going to happen, get ready to survive it, get ready to make a life afterward. Get focused on arranging to survive so that we can do more than just get batted around by crazy people, desperate people, thugs, and leaders who don’t know what they’re doing!”

She just stared at me. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I was rolling—too fast, maybe. “I’m talking about this place, Jo, this cul-de-sac with a wall around it. I’m talking about the day a big gang of those hungry, desperate, crazy people outside decide to come in. I’m talking about what we’ve got to do before that happens so that we can survive and rebuild—or at least survive and escape to be something other than beggars.”

“Someone’s going to just smash in our wall and come in?”

“More likely blast it down, or blast the gate open. It’s going to happen some day. You know that as well as I do.”

“Oh, no I don’t,” she protested. She sat up straight, almost stiff, her lunch forgotten for the moment. I bit into a piece of acorn bread that was full of dried fruit and nuts. It’s a favorite of mine, but I managed to chew and swallow without tasting it.

“Jo, we’re in for trouble. You’ve already admitted that.”

“Sure,” she said. “More shootings, more break-ins. That’s what I meant.”

“And that’s what will happen for a while. I wish I could guess how long. We’ll be hit and hit and hit, then the big hit will come. And if we’re not ready for it, it will be like Jericho.”

She held herself rigid, rejecting. “You don’t know that! You can’t read the future. No one can.”

“You can,” I said, “if you want to. It’s scary, but once you get past the fear, it’s easy. In LA. some walled communities bigger and stronger than this one just aren’t there any more. Nothing left but ruins, rats, and squatters. What happened to them can happen to us. We’ll die in here unless we get busy now and work out ways to survive.”

“If you think that, why don’t you tell your parents. Warn them and see what they say.”

“I intend to as soon as I think of a way to do it that will reach them. Besides… I think they already know. I think my father does, anyway. I think most of the adults know. They don’t want to know, but they do.”

“My mother could be right about Donner. He really could do some good.”

“No. No, Donner’s just a kind of human banister.”

“A what?”

“I mean he’s like…like a symbol of the past for us to hold on to as we’re pushed into the future. He’s nothing. No substance. But having him there, the latest in a two-and-a-half-century-long line of American Presidents make people feel that the country, the culture that they grew up with is still here—that we’ll get through these bad times and back to normal.”

“We could,” she said. “We might. I think someday we will.” No, she didn’t. She was too bright to take anything but the most superficial comfort from her denial. But even superficial comfort is better than none, I guess. I tried another tactic.

“Did you ever read about bubonic plague in medieval Europe?” I asked.

She nodded. She reads a lot the way I do, reads all kinds of things. “A lot of the continent was depopulated,” she said. “Some survivors thought the world was coming to an end.”

“Yes, but once they realized it wasn’t, they also realized there was a lot of vacant land available for the taking, and if they had a trade, they realized they could demand better pay for their work. A lot of things changed for the survivors.”

“What’s your point?”

“The changes.” I thought for a moment. They were slow changes compared to anything that might happen here, but it took a plague to make some of the people realize that things
could
change.”

“So?”

“Things are changing now, too. Our adults haven’t been wiped out by a plague so they’re still anchored in the past, waiting for the good old days to come back. But things have changed a lot, and they’ll change more. Things are always changing. This is just one of the big jumps instead of the little step-by-step changes that are easier to take. People have changed the climate of the world. Now they’re waiting for the old days to come back.”

“Your father says he doesn’t believe people changed the climate in spite of what scientists say. He says only God could change the world in such an important way.”

“Do you believe him?”

She opened her mouth, looked at me, then closed it again. After a while, she said, “I don’t know.”

“My father has his blind spots,” I said. “He’s the best person I know, but even he has blind spots.”

“It doesn’t make any difference,” she said. “We can’t make the climate change back, no matter why it changed in the first place. You and I can’t. The neighborhood can’t. We can’t do anything.”

I lost patience. “Then let’s kill ourselves now and be done with it!”

She frowned, her round, too serious face almost angry. She tore bits of peel from a small navel orange. “What then?” she demanded. “What can we do?”

I put the last bite of my acorn bread down and went around her to my night table. I took several books from the deep bottom drawer and showed them to her. “This is what I’ve been doing—reading and studying these over the past few months. These books are old like all the books in this house. I’ve also been using Dad’s computer when he lets me—to get new stuff.”

Frowning, she looked them over. Three books on survival in the wilderness, three on guns and shooting, two each on handling medical emergencies, California native and naturalized plants and their uses, and basic living: logcabin-building, livestock raising, plant cultivation, soap making—that kind of thing. Joanne caught on at once.

“What are you doing?” she asked. “Trying to learn to live off the land?”

“I’m trying to learn whatever I can that might help me survive out there. I think we should all study books like these. I think we should bury money and other necessities in the ground where thieves won’t find them. I think we should make emergency packs—grab and run packs—in case we have to get out of here in a hurry. Money, food, clothing, matches, a blanket… I think we should fix places outside where we can meet in case we get separated. Hell, I think a lot of things. And I know—I know!—that no matter how many things I think of, they won’t be enough. Every time I go outside, I try to imagine what it might be like to live out there without walls, and I realize I don’t know anything.”

“Then why—”

“I intend to survive.”

She just stared.

“I mean to learn everything I can while I can,” I said. “If I find myself outside, maybe what I’ve learned will help me live long enough to learn more.”

She gave me a nervous smile. “You’ve been reading too many adventure stories,” she said.

I frowned. How could I reach her. “This isn’t a joke, Jo.”

“What is it then?” She ate the last section of her orange. “What do you want me to say?”

“I want you to be serious. I realize I don’t know very much. None of us knows very much. But we can all learn more. Then we can teach one another. We can stop denying reality or hoping it will go away by magic.”

“That’s not what I’m doing.”

I looked out for a moment at the rain, calming myself.

“Okay. Okay, what are you doing?”

She looked uncomfortable. “I’m still not sure we can really do anything.”

“Jo!”

“Tell me what I can do that won’t get me in trouble or make everyone think I’m crazy. Just tell me something.”

At last. “Have you read all your family’s books?”

“Some of them. Not all. They aren’t all worth reading. Books aren’t going to save us.”

“Nothing is going to save us. If we don’t save ourselves, we’re dead. Now use your imagination. Is there anything on your family bookshelves that might help you if you were stuck outside?”

“No.”

“You answer too fast. Go home and look again. And like I said, use your imagination. Any kind of survival information from encyclopedias, biographies, anything that helps you learn to live off the land and defend ourselves. Even some fiction might be useful.”

She gave me a sidelong glance. “I’ll bet,” she said.

“Jo, if you never need this information, it won’t do you any harm. You’ll just know a little more than you did before. So what? By the way, do you take notes when you read?”

Guarded look. “Sometimes.”

“Read this.” I handed her one of the plant books. This one was about California Indians, the plants they used, and how they used them—an interesting, entertaining little book. She would be surprised. There was nothing in it to scare her or threaten her or push her. I thought I had already done enough of that.

“Take notes,” I told her. “You’ll remember better if you do.”

“I still don’t believe you,” she said. “Things don’t have to be as bad as you say they are.”

I put the book into her hands. “Hang on to your notes,” I said. “Pay special attention to the plants that grow between here and the coast and between here and Oregon along the coast. I’ve marked them.”

“I said I don’t believe you.”

“I don’t care.”

She looked down at the book, ran her hands over the black cloth-and-cardboard binding. “So we learn to eat grass and live in the bushes,” she muttered.

“We learn to survive,” I said. “It’s a good book. Take care of it. You know how my father is about his books.”

T
HURSDAY
, M
ARCH
6, 2025

The rain stopped. My windows are on the north side of the house, and I can see the clouds breaking up. They’re being blown over the mountains toward the desert. Surprising how fast they can move. The wind is strong and cold now. It might cost us a few trees.

I wonder how many years it will be before we see rain again.

❏ ❏ ❏

EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING

S
ATURDAY
, M
ARCH
8, 2025

J
OANNE TOLD
.

She told her mother who told her father who told my father who had one of those serious talks with me.

Damn her.
Damn her!

I saw her today at the service we had for Amy and yesterday at school. She didn’t say a word about what she had done. It turns out she told her mother on Thursday. Maybe it was supposed to be a secret between them or something. But, oh, Phillida Garfield was so concerned for me, so worried. And she didn’t like my scaring Joanne. Was Joanne scared? Not scared enough to use her brain, it seems. Joanne always seemed so sensible. Did she think getting me into trouble would make the danger go away? No, that’s not it. This is just more denial: A dumb little game of “If we don’t talk about bad things, maybe they won’t happen.” Idiot! I’ll never be able to tell her anything important again.

What if I’d been more open. What if I’d talked religion with her? I’d wanted to. How will I ever be able to talk to anyone about that?

What I did say worked its way back to me tonight. Mr. Garfield talked to Dad after the funeral. It was like the whispering game that little kids play. The message went all the way from, “We’re in danger here and we’re going to have to work hard to save ourselves,” to “Lauren is talking about running away because she’s afraid that outsiders are going to riot and tear down the walls and kill us all.”

Well, I had said
some
of that, and Joanne had made it clear that she didn’t agree with me. But I hadn’t just let the bad predictions stand alone: “We’re going to die, boo-hoo.” What would be the point of that? Still, only the negative stuff came home to me.

“Lauren, what did you say to Joanne?” my father demanded. He came to my room after dinner when he should have been doing his final work on tomorrow’s sermon. He sat down on my one chair and stared at me in a way that meant, “Where is your mind, girl? What’s the matter with you?” That look plus Joanne’s name told me what had happened, what this was about. My friend Joanne.
Damn her!

I sat on my bed and looked back at him. “I told her we were in for some bad, dangerous times,” I said. “I warned her we ought to learn what we could now so we could survive.”

That was when he told me how upset Joanne’s mother was, how upset Joanne was, and how they both thought I needed to “talk to someone,” because I thought our world was coming to an end.

“Do you think our world is coming to an end?” Dad asked, and with no warning at all, I almost started crying. I had all I could do to hold it back. What I thought was, “No, I think
your
world is coming to an end, and maybe you with it.” That was terrible. I hadn’t thought about it in such a personal way before. I turned and looked out a window until I felt calmer. When I faced him again, I said. “Yes. Don’t you?”

He frowned. I don’t think he expected me to say that. “You’re fifteen,” he said. “You don’t really understand what’s going on here. The problems we have now have been building since long before you were born.”

“I know.”

He was still frowning. I wondered what he wanted me to say. “What were you doing, then?” he asked. “Why did you say those things to Joanne?”