“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.”
THURSDAY, MARCH 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.
6
❏ ❏ ❏
Drowning people
Sometimes die
Fighting their rescuers.
EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING
SATURDAY, MARCH 8, 2025
JOANNE 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?”
I decided to go on telling the truth for as long as I could. I hate to lie to him. “What I said was true,” I insisted.
“You don’t have to say everything you think you know,” he said. “Haven’t you figured that out yet?”
“Joanne and I were friends,” I said. “I thought I could talk to her.”
He shook his head. “These things f
righten people. It’s best not to talk about them.”
“But, Dad, that’s like…like ignoring a fire in the living room because we’re all in the kitchen, and, besides, house fires are too scary to talk about.”
“Don’t warn Joanne or any of your other friends,” he said. “Not now. I know you think you’re right, but you’re not doing anyone any good. You’re just panicking people.”
I managed to suppress a surge of anger by shifting the subject a little. Sometimes the way to move Dad is to go at him from several directions.
“Did Mr. Garfield give you back your book?” I asked.
“What book?”
“I loaned Joanne a book about California plants and the ways Indians used them. It was one of your books. I’m sorry I loaned it to her. It’s so neutral, I didn’t think it could cause trouble. But I guess it has.”
He looked startled, then he almost smiled. “Yes, I will have to have that one back, all right. You wouldn’t have the acorn bread you like so much without that one—not to mention a few other things we take for granted.”
“Acorn bread…?”
He nodded. “Most of the people in this country don’t eat acorns, you know. They have no tradition of eating them, they don’t know how to prepare them, and for some reason, they find the idea of eating them disgusting. Some of our neighbors wanted to cut down all our big live oak trees and plant something useful. You wouldn’t believe the time I had changing their minds.”
“What did people eat before?”
“Bread made of wheat and other grains—corn, rye, oats…things like that.”
“Too expensive!”
“Didn’t use to be. You get that book back from Joanne.” He drew a deep breath. “Now, let’s get off the side track and back onto the main track. What were you planning? Did you try to talk Joanne into running away?”
Then I sighed. “Of course not.”
“Her father says you did.”
“He’s wrong. This was about staying alive, learning to live outside so that we’d be able to if we ever had to.”
He watched me as though he could read the truth in my mind. When I was little, I used to think he could. “All right,” he said. “You may have meant well, but no more scare talk.”
“It wasn’t scare talk. We do need to learn what we can while there’s time.”
“That’s not up to you, Lauren. You don’t make decisions for this community.”
Oh hell. If I could just find a balance between holding back too much and pushing, poaching. “Yes, sir.”
He leaned back and looked at me. “Tell me exactly what you told Joanne. All of it.”
I told him. I was careful to keep my voice flat and passionless, but I didn’t leave anything out. I wanted him to know, to understand what I believed. The nonreligious part of it, anyway. When I finished, I stopped and waited. He seemed to expect me to say more. He just sat there for a while and stared at me. I couldn’t tell what he felt. Other people never could if he didn’t want them to, but I’ve been able to most of the time. Now I felt shut out, and there was nothing I could do about it. I waited.
At last he let his breath out as though he had been holding it. “Don’t talk about this any more,” he said in a voice that didn’t invite argument.
I looked back at him, not wanting to give a promise that would be a lie.
“Lauren.”
“Dad.”
“I want your promise that you won’t talk about this any more.”
What to say? I wouldn’t promise. I couldn’t. “We could make earthquake packs,” I suggested. “Emergency kits that we can grab in case we have to get out of the house fast. If we call them earthquake packs, the idea might not bother people so much. People are used to worrying about earthquakes.” All this came out in a rush.
“I want your promise, Daughter.”
I slumped. “Why? You know I’m right. Even Mrs. Garfield must know it. So why?”
I thought he would yell at me or punish me. His voice had had that warning edge to it that my brothers and I had come to call the rattle—as in a rattlesnake’s warning sound. If you pushed him past the rattle, you were in trouble. If he called you “son” or “daughter” you were close to trouble.
“Why?” I insisted.
“Because you don’t have any idea what you’re doing,” he said. He frowned and rubbed his forehead. When he spoke again, the edge went out of his voice. “It’s better to teach people than to scare them, Lauren. If you scare them and nothing happens, they lose their fear, and you lose some of your authority with them. It’s harder to scare them a second time, harder to teach them, harder to win back their trust. Best to begin by teaching.” His mouth crooked into a little smile. “It’s interesting that you chose to begin your efforts with the book you lent to Joanne. Did you ever think of teaching from that book?”
“Teaching…my kindergartners?”
“Why not. Get them started on the right foot. You could even put together a class for older kids and adults. Something like Mr. Ibarra’s wood carving class, Mrs. Baiter’s needlework classes, and young Robert Hsu’s astronomy lectures. People are bored. They wouldn’t mind another informal class now that they’ve lost the Yannis television. If you can think of ways to entertain them and teach them at the same time, you’ll get your information out. And all without making anyone look down.”
“Look down…?”
“Into the abyss, Daughter.” But I wasn’t in trouble any more. Not at the moment. “You’ve just noticed the abyss,” he continued. “The adults in this community have been balancing at the edge of it for more years than you’ve been alive.”
I got up, went over to him and took his hand. “It’s getting worse, Dad.”
“I know.”
“Maybe it’s time to look down. Time to look for some hand and foot holds before we just get pushed in.”
“That’s why we have target practice every week and Lazor wire and our emergency bell. Your idea for emergency packs is a good one. Some people already have them. For earthquakes. Some will assemble them if I suggest it. And, of course, some won’t do anything at all. There are always people who won’t do anything.”
“Will you suggest it?”
“Yes. At the next neighborhood association meeting.”
“What else can we do? None of this is fast enough.”
“It will have to be.” He stood up, a tall, broad wall of a man. “Why don’t you ask around, see if anyone in the neighborhood knows anything about martial arts. You need more than a book or two to learn good dependable unarmed combat.”
I blinked. “Okay.”
“Check with old Mr. Hsu and Mr. and Mrs. Montoya.”
“Mr. and Mrs.?”
“I think so. Talk to them about classes, not about Armageddon.”
I looked up at him, and he looked more like a wall than ever, standing and waiting. And he had offered me a lot—all I would get, I suspected. I sighed. “Okay, Dad, I promise. I’ll try not to scare anyone else. I just hope things hold together long enough for us to do it your way.”
And he echoed my sigh. “At last. Good. Now come out back with me. There are some important things buried in the yard in sealed containers. It’s time for you to know where they are—just in case.”
SUNDAY, MARCH 9, 2025
Today, Dad preached from Genesis six, Noah and the ark: “And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts and of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them. But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.”
And then, of course, later God says to Noah, “Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch.”
/> Dad focused on the two-part nature of this situation. God decides to destroy everything except Noah, his family, and some animals. But if Noah is going to be saved, he has plenty of hard work to do.
Joanne came to me after church and said she was sorry for all the craziness.
“Okay,” I said.
“Still friends?” she asked.
And I hedged: “Not enemies, anyway. Get my fathers book back to me. He wants it.”
“My mother took it. I didn’t know she’d get so upset.”
“It isn’t hers. Get it back to me. Or have your dad give it to mine. I don’t care. But he wants his book.”
“All right.”
I watched her leave the house. She looks so trustworthy—tall and straight and serious and intelligent—I still feel inclined to trust her. But I can’t. I don’t. She has no idea how much she could have hurt me if I had given her just a few more words to use against me. I don’t think I’ll ever trust her again, and I hate that. She was my best friend. Now she isn’t.
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 12, 2025
Garden thieves got in last night. They stripped citrus trees of fruit in the Hsu yard and the Talcott yard. In the process, they trampled what was left of winter gardens and much of the spring planting.
Dad says we have to set up a regular watch. He tried to call a neighborhood association meeting for tonight, but it’s a work night for some people, including Gary Hsu who sleeps over at his job whenever he has to report in person. We’re supposed to get together for a meeting on Saturday. Meanwhile, Dad got Jay Garfield, Wyatt and Kayla Talcott, Alex Montoya, and Edwin Dunn together to patrol the neighborhood in shifts in armed pairs. That meant that except for the Talcotts who are already a pair (and who are so angry about their garden that I pity any thief who gets in their way), the others have to find partners among the other adults of the neighborhood.
“Find someone you trust to protect your back,” I heard Dad tell the little group. Each pair was to patrol for two hours from just before dark to just after dawn. The first patrol, walking through or looking into all the back yards would get people used to the idea of watchers while they were still awake enough to understand.