Starbird Murphy and the World Outside (8 page)

Iron's house was the oldest building on the Farm. It's a log cabin made of western red cedar by homesteaders, the first white people who came onto the land. Iron says that the cabin is more than a hundred and twenty years old, and he should know since his ancestors built it.

Inside was one large room with exposed wood logs patched together by some sort of clay. The stone facade of a fireplace divided the north wall, but Iron used a woodstove for heat instead. The floor was covered with a heavy rug, and smaller rugs masked its threadbare patches.

The furniture was limited to a wood table with one stool, two overstuffed chairs positioned on either side of the woodstove, and a bed in the south corner next to the only window. A teakettle and a pan sat on top of the woodstove, and a collection of ceramic mugs hung from hooks in the wall.

“Cider?” Iron asked, holding up a glass jug he had brought from the main house. “Last bottle from the fall press. A bit sour. I brought your mug.” Iron loved the Family apple cider as much as I did. Every autumn we gathered in the orchard for apple picking and cider pressing, making almost two hundred gallons over the course of a weekend. It was one of the few celebrations that continued after EARTH left. Iron and I had our own ritual at the end of each pressing that involved drinking cider out of ceramic mugs we had made ourselves.

I nodded and sat down in one of the big chairs. Although we had logged a lot of time together working on the coop, I hadn't spent much time in Iron's cabin. He wasn't the easiest person to socialize with; Iron seemed more comfortable with a tractor than a person.

The back corner of the room by the bed served as a makeshift closet, with hooks drilled into the logs every few inches. The opposite corner contained Iron's extended tool collection, his favorite items that he kept inside to prevent moisture from bloating the wood or rusting the metal. Our lives in the Pacific Northwest could be boiled down to a daily struggle against the damp.

“Why did your ancestors decide to settle here?” I was already feeling the desire to light a fire in the woodstove, even though it was just September.

“Fraser Canyon gold rush. They came up from California and planned to go on into British Columbia, but they found enough land left for homesteading and decided to start farming. Two brothers built this cabin by themselves.” He handed me my mug and sat down in the other chair. “They claimed a hundred and sixty acres after five years. Before them, this was all trees.”

“Does it bother you that this was your land before the Family moved here?” I always thought if I could get to the bottom of Iron's reluctance to embrace the Family's beliefs, then I could change his mind.

“Ownership,” said Iron, taking a sip of his cider, “is an interesting concept. Did my family own the land after taking it from the native people? Did the U.S. government own this land and have the right to give it to us? I don't think of land as something that belongs to us, but something that we have to take care of. Do you know who legally owns this property now?”

“We all do,” I said. “We own everything together.”

Iron laughed. “We say that, but it would be difficult to put the name of every Family member on a deed. When my mother gave the farm to the Family, they had to name a group of legal owners, so they formed a corporation. EARTH is the president, and the elders are, or were, the board of directors. Of course, we lost Venus Ocean, so EARTH put Ephraim on the board to replace her. Other members have left the Family, like Jupiter and Pluto, but never resigned from the board.”

Jupiter Rock had famously left the Family after quarreling with EARTH during a Translation. He publicly called EARTH a “false prophet.” After he left, most Family members referred to him as Judas rather than Jupiter.

“But were you angry when Callisto gave the property away?” I tried to imagine Iron as a nine-year-old boy when EARTH and the others came.

“What I thought then doesn't matter now,” he said. “You're here and there are certain bonds.” He looked down and touched a hole in his wool sock. “Now, let me ask you some questions.” The deep wrinkles on Iron's face rippled out from his eyes. “What do you think about this Calling?”

The stupid Calling again
. “Why do people keep asking me this?” I said. “Does everyone think a restaurant job is the best Calling I'm ever going to get?” I knew I sounded whiny.
I can't believe he called me away from Indus to talk about this
. “Even if I wanted to work there, I couldn't. I'm off-grid.”

“Massive rivers start from tiny springs.” Iron seemed unfazed by my harsh tone. He gripped his right ankle with his left hand. A tough, wiry man, Iron was especially agile for his age. “Starbird, what do you want to do with your life?”

“It doesn't matter what I want,” I mumbled, feeling guilty for complaining again. “We each get our Calling and the Cosmos leads us to our life path.” I thought Iron was reminding me of our Family Principles and gently chiding me for being willful.

He looked at me for a quiet second. Then he stood and walked to the wall of the cabin, beside the stone fireplace.

“I love this house,” he said. He put one hand on an exposed cedar beam of the wall. “I plan to stay here until I die, working the farm and fixing things until I can't fix them anymore. While I can still use a shovel, I plan to dig a deep hole in the middle of the fir trees, and when my time comes, I will drag myself to that hole and lie down in it. I would cover my own body over with dirt if I could.” Iron was half looking at me and half looking at the wall as he spoke. He closed his eyes for a minute, as if the cedar log was saying something back. Then he sat down again in his chair.

“The Cosmos might have another idea. Maybe the fir stand will be struck by lightning and my cabin will burn to the ground. Maybe Mount Baker will erupt and ash will cover the back lot. Maybe a new owner will show up with a shotgun and point me toward the road. I don't know about any of that, but I do know what I
want
. Starbird, unless you have a plan for your life, how would you even hear a Calling if it came?”

I twisted the cup around in my hands. “EARTH will tell me.”

Iron grunted. His dark eyes peered at me from under heavy, white eyebrows. “I'm going to tell you something that most of the Family doesn't know. Maybe I shouldn't tell you, but I will. The Farm is not in a good financial position. That corporation EARTH set up has mismanaged our businesses and property, and Gamma came to me for help. Like I said, my plan is to stay here in this cabin, but the rest of this”—Iron motioned toward the main house, orchard, and back lot—“I don't know what will happen. You're young. You should have the life you want.”

I had to put my mug down on the floor because my hand started trembling. Family members never talked about finances; it wasn't exactly forbidden, just highly suspect. Plus, this was the longest conversation I'd ever had with Iron that wasn't about the coop or the harvest.

“EARTH says that if we doubt the Cosmos will provide for us, we're inviting lack into our lives.”

Iron cleared his throat. “Everyone has a right to her own beliefs. I just want to make sure you have a choice.” He leaned over to the woodstove and grabbed a brown paper envelope that was leaning against the copper teapot. I hadn't noticed it sitting there before. He handed it to me.

With a nervous twist in my stomach, I took it. The seal was old and the glue that once held it together had no stickiness left. Inside was a piece of heavy, embossed paper.

State of Washington, Department of Health

Certificate of Live Birth

Date of Birth: 7/5/1996

Place: Whatcom County, Washington

Sex: Female

Given Name: Starbird

Last Name: Murphy

“Starbird Murphy?” My hand shook as it held the page. “Certificate of Live Birth?” I had seen the name Murphy before. There was a weathered wooden sign in the barn with the words
MURPHY'S FARM
carved into it. I kept reading the page.

Mother's Name: Elizabeth Stone

Father's Name: John Murphy

“John Murphy.” I was unable to contain my surprise, or my sadness. “You're my father?”

“No.” Iron held up a hand toward me. “Well, I honestly don't know.” He dropped it again. “I might be. We were young and we didn't have traditional relationships. Lots of us had seen our parents' marriages turn into divorce. I had seen my mother widowed. We didn't want that; I didn't want that. We wanted to avoid the concept of ownership,” he explained, even though I had heard it all before. I had grown up with my mother describing the early days of the Family, when there were few marriages or exclusive partnerships. Several married couples that had joined the Family, like EARTH and his wife, Uranus Peak, or Indus's father and his mother, Bithiah, had dissolved the marriages when they became part of the group.

Of course, sometimes it was obvious who someone's biological father was; like Badger, who looked so much like Adam, it was impossible to imagine they weren't related. My brown eyes looked like Fern's, but my strawberry- blonde hair at least could resemble EARTH's.

“Your mother came to me when she was nine months pregnant,” Iron went on, “and she was scared. EARTH wanted all babies to be born here on the Farm, not in hospitals, not with birth certificates and not registered with the federal government.
Living off the grid
—that was the gift he said we were giving our children.”

“I was born on the Farm.”

“So you were.” Iron smiled, showing his crooked teeth. “But a few days before, Fern knocked on my door late at night, her belly so big she couldn't sit or stand without help. She was terrified that she might die in childbirth like Venus Ocean, or that something else might happen to her when you were little. She wanted to make sure that you had a safety net and made me swear to take care of you if anything went wrong. Then she asked if I would go with her and get you a birth certificate once you were born. And I said yes.

“When you were a week old, we told everyone we were going foraging for chanterelles and took the truck to my old family doctor in Bellingham from when I was a boy. He got us that birth certificate and helped us apply for your Social Security card, too.” Iron pointed to the brown envelope that was still sitting on my lap. I opened it and saw two small paper cards sitting inside. They both said the same name,
Starbird Murphy
.

“Of course, we had to go behind EARTH's back, and your mother asked me to hold on to it because she thought you would probably find it if she kept it hidden in the yurt. She made me promise not to tell you.” He shrugged. “Some promises you have to break.”

I wasn't surprised that Iron would disobey EARTH, but Fern? It was like realizing that a tree I'd been climbing all my life was rotten in the middle and ready to crumble. When a Family member betrays EARTH, she betrays all of us. I wanted to open the door to the woodstove and throw the papers right in the fire. How could they?

“Why are you breaking your promise now?” I unclenched my teeth to ask.

“Fern doesn't want you to go to Seattle.” He leaned forward in his chair again. “She's afraid of life out there. And after losing Doug, I don't think she would ever agree to it. But you're sixteen now. You need to decide. Is your future here or is it in the World Outside?”

 6 

A
bright half-moon was up when I left Iron's cabin that night, giving me plenty of visibility as I stomped along the path through the fir trees.

First, I had said, “Thanks anyway, but I don't want this,” and tossed the papers back on the woodstove.

Iron replied, “Do what you see fit, but you can't leave them here,” and handed the papers back to me.

I got angry and yelled some things about how he never loved EARTH and nobody is supposed to know who her dad is, and then I stormed out with the envelope shoved in my pocket. I had never talked to Iron that way. I had never talked to any adult that way in my life. I didn't recognize myself. But then, until five minutes ago, I didn't even know my name.

Murphy
. It rolled around in my mouth like a marble as I mumbled it aloud to the trees. I hated the sound of it. When people joined the Family, they came with names. We called them “old names” or “outside names.” A person's true name was translated by EARTH. So if Murphy wasn't my true name, why did I have the sickly feeling that it was important, that maybe it meant something about my relationship with Iron? Did Fern go to him because she knew he was my father? She'd always told me she didn't know who my father was, but she had withheld my birth certificate, so maybe she'd withheld that, too. I didn't want Iron to be my father; I wanted EARTH to be my father. If I kept this birth certificate, would I be accepting Iron, a non-Believer, as my dad?

I didn't walk toward the yurt. Fern might still be awake and I wasn't ready to face her. True, she defied EARTH because she was concerned about my future. But she didn't tell me about it. Even when she saw that I might be getting my Calling and would need a birth certificate, she withheld. No one in the Free Family is allowed to interfere with someone else's Calling. She broke Family rules twice yet claimed to be a Believer. Was she lying about that, too?

My thoughts swam around like a school of fish, turning suddenly right and then left, threatening to swim for hours. I could still hear music coming from the main house, some sweet harmonies being sung along with the piano and guitar but no harmonica. Light was leaking from the door and gaps in the wooded planks of the Sanctuary.
I needed someone I could talk to.

I walked to the back door of our Sanctuary, the one the Family used to enter through for Translations. I was going to our sacred room at night looking for Indus. I knocked and heard a muffled word inside that sounded like
yes
.

The door creaked on its rusty hinge and swung open. There, on top of one of the rugs that covered the floor of our Sanctuary, Indus was stretched out on his back beside a huddled group of candles. And on top of him was Lyra Hay, and she wasn't wearing a shirt.

Indus sat up with a jolt. Lyra giggled and didn't cover herself. “Hey, Starbird,” she said.

“Sorry,” I stammered, grabbing for the side of the wooden door and pulling it toward me, scraping the back of my hand painfully against the barn's wall as Indus attempted to move Lyra off him.

I turned and ran hard up the gravel drive, not looking back to see if the barn door opened after me. Flying past the main house, I could hear Adam's guitar and Caelum's banjo playing a cheery duet as I ran toward the apple orchard, which stood dark and cool beyond the patio and garden. I didn't slow down as I entered the neat rows of trees but kept going at the same speed until my foot found a grounded apple and tossed me down on my chest so hard, the wind was knocked out of me.

I gasped, unable to breathe, rolling left and right on my back, kicking my legs, beating my hand against the soppy ground that splattered mud on my face. When my diaphragm finally let air in again, I clutched my raw hand to my lips where the barn wood had scraped off the skin and started to sob. I didn't hear footsteps of anyone running after me. No one was calling my name. I was alone in the trees.

Indus, too? Is there anyone I can believe in?
I beat my good hand against the cold, damp ground again, sure my back was a disaster of mud. I rolled onto my side thinking I would throw up. I felt like I'd eaten a beehive whole. Everything inside me was churning.

After a few minutes, the nausea subsided. I rolled onto my back again and took several deep breaths. Dozens of apples were hanging over my head, and everything in the orchard smelled sickly sweet. Whatever this feeling was inside of me, I wanted it out.
Jealousy?

True Believers didn't indulge in jealousy, not like in the World Outside. Sexual desire was considered natural and healthy, and not intended to be locked up in a room to which only one person was given the key. EARTH said that shame about our bodies and our desires has no place in our Eden on the Farm.
The animals are God's creatures and they know no shame
, he said at my fifth Translation.

But seeing Lyra and Indus together made me feel enraged and weak at the same time. Was this the desperation of ownership that the Elders were trying to avoid? Indus said that he wanted to love one person, right before he kissed me against the spruce tree. Was I a terrible kisser? Maybe Lyra was better since she was from the Outside and had probably already had sex. But I was the one who had known him his whole life. Didn't love matter more than sex? Did he love her? He seemed so impressed by Venus Lake because she was from Seattle. Maybe I just wasn't exciting enough for Indus.

For the second time that night, questions and worries wandered around my head in dazed circles. I lay staring at the constellations that peeked through the gnarly arms of the trees overhead until an apple dislodged from its limb and fell to the ground beside my head with a
thonk
!
If this is what it feels like to get a Calling, I wish I had never heard my name
.