“What happened to you? Who did this? Why did you go outside? Where are your clothes? What—?”
“Where’s the key you stole?” Dad cut in. “Did they take it from you?”
Everyone jumped, looked up at Dad, then down at Keith.
“I couldn’t help it,” Keith said, still panting. “I couldn’t, Daddy. There were five guys.”
“So they got the key.”
Keith nodded, careful not to meet Dad’s eyes.
Dad turned and strode out of the house, almost at a run. It was too late now to get George or Brian Hsu to change the gate lock. That would have to be done tomorrow, and new keys made and passed out. I thought Dad must be going out to warn people and to put more watchers on duty. I wanted to offer to help alert people, but I didn’t. Dad looked too angry to accept help from one of his kids right then. And when he got back, Keith was in for it. Was he ever in for it. A pair of pants gone, and a shirt and a pair of shoes. Cory had never been willing to let us run around barefoot the way a lot of kids did, except in the house. Her definitions of being civilized did not involve dirty, heavily callused feet any more than they involved dirty, diseased skin. Shoes were expensive, and we were always growing out of ours, but Cory insisted. Each of us had at least one pair of wearable shoes, in spite of what they cost, and they cost a lot. Now money would have to be found to get an extra pair for Keith.
Keith curled up on the floor, smudging the tile with blood from his nose and mouth, hugging himself and crying now that Dad was gone. It took Cory two or three minutes to get him up and half carry him to the bathroom. I tried to help her, but she stared at me like I was the one who beat him up, so I let them alone. It wasn’t as though I wanted to help. I just thought I should. Keith was in real pain, and it was hard for me to endure sharing it.
I cleaned up the blood so no one would slip in it or track it around. Then I fixed dinner, ate, fed the three younger boys, and put the rest aside for Dad, Cory, and Keith.
SUNDAY, AUGUST 3, 2025
Keith had to confess what he had done this morning at church. He had to stand up in front of the whole congregation and tell them everything, including what the five thugs had done to him. Then he had to apologize—to God, to his parents, and to the congregation that he had endangered and inconvenienced. Dad made him do that over Cory’s objections.
Dad never hit him, though last night he must have been tempted. “Why would you do such a thing!” he kept demanding. “How could any son of mine be so stupid! Where are your brains, boy? What did you think you were doing? I’m talking to you! Answer me!”
Keith answered and answered and answered, but the answers never seemed to make much sense to Dad. “I ain’t no baby no more,” he wept. Or, “I wanted to show you. Just wanted to show you! You always let Lauren do stuff!” Or, “I’m a man! I shouldn’t be hiding in the house, hiding in the wall; I’m a man!”
It went on and on because Keith refused to admit he had done anything wrong. He wanted to show he was a man, not a scared girl. It wasn’t his fault that a gang of guys jumped him, beat him, robbed him. He didn’t do anything. It wasn’t his fault.
Dad stared at him in utter disgust. “You disobeyed,” he said. “You stole. You endangered the lives and the property of everyone here, including your mother, your sister, and your little brothers. If you were the man you think you are, I’d beat the hell out of you!”
Keith stared straight ahead. “Bad guys come in even if they don’t have a key,” he muttered. “They come in and steal stuff. It’s not my fault!”
It took Dad two hours to get Keith to admit that it was his fault, no excuses. He’d done wrong. He wouldn’t do it again.
My brother isn’t very smart, but he makes up for it in pure stubbornness. My father is smart and stubborn. Keith didn’t have a chance, but he made Dad work for his victory. The next morning, Dad had his revenge. I don’t believe he thought of Keith’s forced confession that way, but Keith’s expression told me that he did.
“How do I get out of this family,” Marcus muttered to me as we watched. I sympathized. He had to share a room with Keith, and the two of them, only a year apart in age, fought all the time. Now things would be worse.
Keith is Cory’s favorite. If you asked her, she would say she didn’t have a favorite, but she does. She babies him and lets him get away with skipping chores, a little lying, a little stealing… Maybe that’s why Keith thinks when he screws up, it’s okay.
This morning’s sermon was on the ten commandments with extra emphasis on “Honor thy father and thy mother,” and “Thou shalt not steal.” I think Dad got rid of a lot of anger and frustration, preaching that sermon. Keith, tall, stone-faced, looking older than his thirteen years, kept his anger. I could see him keeping it inside, holding it down, choking on it.
9
❏ ❏ ❏
All struggles
Are essentially
power struggles.
Who will rule,
Who will lead,
Who will define,
refine,
confine,
design,
Who will dominate.
All struggles
Are essentially power struggles,
And most are no more intellectual
than two rams
knocking their heads together.
EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING
SUNDAY, AUGUST 17, 2025
MY PARENTS’ USUAL GOOD judgment failed them this week on my brother Keith’s birthday. They gave him his own BB gun. It wasn’t new, but it worked, and it looked much more dangerous than it was. And it was his. He didn’t have to share it. I suppose it was intended to make him feel better about the two years he still, had to wait until he got his hands on the Smith & Wesson, or better yet, the Heckler & Koch. And, of course, it was supposed to help him get over his stupid desire to sneak out, and the humiliation of his public confession.
Keith shot a few more pigeons and crows, threatened to shoot Marcus—Marcus just told me about that tonight—then yesterday, he took off for parts unknown. He took the BB gun with him, of course. No one has seen him for about eighteen hours, and there’s not much doubt that he’s gone outside again.
MONDAY, AUGUST 18, 2025
Dad went out looking for Keith today. He even called in the police. He says he doesn’t know how we’ll afford the fee, but he’s scared. The longer Keith is gone, the more likely he is to get hurt or killed. Marcus says he thinks Keith went looking for the guys who beat him up. I don’t believe it. Not even Keith would go looking for five guys—or even one guy—with nothing but a BB gun.
Cory’s even more upset than Dad. She’s scared and jumpy and sick to her stomach, and she keeps crying. I talked her into going back to bed, then taught her classes myself. I’ve done that four or five times before when she was sick, so it wasn’t too weird for the kids. I just used Cory’s lesson plans, and during the first part of the day, I partnered the older kids with my kindergartners and let everyone get a taste of teaching or learning from someone different. Some of my students are my age and older, and a couple of these—Aura Moss and Michael Talcott—got up and left. They knew I understood the work. I got the last of my high school work and tests out of the way almost two years ago. Since then I’ve done uncredited (free) college work with Dad. Michael and Aura know all that, but they’re much too grown up to learn anything from the likes of me. The hell with them. It’s a pity, though, that my Curtis has to have a brother like Michael—not that any of us gets to choose our brothers.
TUESDAY, AUGUST 19, 2025
No sign of Keith. I think Cory has gone into mourning for him. I handled classes again today, and Dad went out searching again. He came home looking exhausted tonight, and Cory wept and shouted at him.
“You didn’t try!” she said with me and all three of my brothers looking on. We’d all come to see whether Dad had brought Keith back. “You could have found him if you’d tried!”
Dad tried t
o go to her, but she backed away, still shouting: “If it were your precious Lauren out there alone, you would have found her by now! You don’t care about Keith.”
She’s never said anything like that before.
I mean, we were always Cory and Lauren. She never asked me to call her “mother,” and I never thought to do it. I always knew she was my stepmother. But still… I always loved her. It mystified me that Keith was her favorite, but it didn’t make me love her any less. I was her kid, but not her kid. Not quite. Not really. But I always thought she loved me.
Dad shooed us all off to bed. He quieted Cory and took her back to their room. A few minutes ago, he came to see me.
“She didn’t mean it,” he said. “She loves you as though you were her daughter, Lauren.”
I just looked at him.
“She wants you to know she’s sorry.”
I nodded, and after a few more assurances, he went.
Is she sorry? I don’t think so.
Did she mean it. She did. Oh, yes, she meant it. Shit.
THURSDAY, AUGUST 30, 2025
Keith came back last night.
He just walked into the house during dinner, as though he’d been outside playing football instead of gone since Saturday. And this time he looked fine. Not a mark on him. He was wearing a clean new set of clothing—even new shoes. All of it was of much better quality than he had when he left, and much more expensive than we could have afforded.
He still had the BB gun until Dad took it away from him and smashed it.
Keith wouldn’t say where he’d been or how he’d gotten the new things, so Dad beat him bloody.
I’ve only seen Dad like that once before—when I was 12. Cory tried to stop him, tried to pull him off Keith, screamed at him in English, then in Spanish, then without words.
Gregory threw up on the floor, and Bennett started to cry. Marcus backed away from the whole scene, and slipped out of the house.
Then it was over.
Keith was crying like a two-year-old and Cory was holding him. Dad stood over both of them, looking dazed.
I followed Marcus out the back door and stumbled and almost fell down the back steps. I didn’t know what I was doing. Marcus wasn’t around. I sat on the steps in the warm darkness and let my body shake and hurt and vomit in helpless empathy with Keith. Then I guess I passed out.
I came to sometime later with Marcus shaking me and whispering my name.
I got up with Marcus hanging on to my arm, trying to steady me, and I got to my bedroom.
“Let me sleep in here,” he whispered once I was sitting on my bed, dazed and still in pain. “I’ll sleep on the floor, I don’t care.”
“All right,” I said, not caring where he slept. I lay down on the bed without taking off even my shoes, and drew my body into a fetal ball on top of the bedclothes. I either fell asleep that way or I passed out again.
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2025
Keith has gone outside again. He went yesterday afternoon. Cory didn’t admit until tonight that he took not only her key this time, but her gun. He took the Smith & Wesson.
Dad refused to go out and look for him. Dad slept in his office last night. He’s sleeping there again tonight.
I never liked my brother much. I hate him now for what he’s doing to the family—for what he’s doing to my father. I hate him. Damn, I hate him.
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 2025
Keith came home tonight while Dad was visiting over at the Talcott house. I suspect that Keith hung around and watched the house and waited until Dad left. He had come to see Cory. He brought her a lot of money done up in a fat roll.
She stared at it, then took it, dazed. “So much, Keith,” she whispered. “Where did you get it?”
“It’s for you,” he said. “All for you, not him.”
He took her hand and closed it around the money—and she let him do it, though she had to know it must be stolen money or drug money or worse.
Keith gave Bennett and Gregory big, expensive bars of milk chocolate with peanuts. He just smiled at Marcus and me—an obvious “fuck you” smile. Then, before Dad could come home and find him here, he left again. Cory hadn’t realized that he was leaving again, and she all but screamed and clung to him.
“No! You’ll be killed out there! What’s the matter with you? Stay home!”
“Mama, I won’t let him beat me again,” he said. “I don’t need him hitting me and telling me what to do. Pretty soon, I’ll be able to make more money in a day than he can in a week—maybe in a month.”
“You’ll be killed!”
“No I won’t. I know what I’m doing.” He kissed her, then, with surprising ease, took her arms from around him. “I’ll come back and see you,” he said. “I’ll bring you presents.”
And he vanished out the back door, and was gone.
2026
❏ ❏ ❏
CIVILIZATION IS TO GROUPS what intelligence is to individuals. It is a means of combining the intelligence of many to achieve ongoing group adaptation.
Civilization, like intelligence, may serve well, serve adequately, or fail to serve its adaptive function. When civilization fails to serve, it must disintegrate unless it is acted upon by unifying internal or external forces.
EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING
10
❏ ❏ ❏
When apparent stability disintegrates,
As it must—
God is Change—
People tend to give in
To fear and depression,
To need and greed.
When no influence is strong enough
To unify people
They divide.
They struggle,
One against one,
Group against group,
For survival, position, power.
They remember old hates and generate new ones,
They create chaos and nurture it.
They kill and kill and kill,
Until they are exhausted and destroyed,
Until they are conquered by outside forces,
Or until one of them becomes
A leader
Most will follow,
Or a tyrant
Most fear.
EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING
THURSDAY, JUNE 25, 2026
KEITH CAME HOME YESTERDAY, bigger than ever, as tall and lean as Dad is tall and broad. He’s not quite 14, but he already looks like the man he wants so much to be. We’re like that, we Olaminas—tall, sturdy, fast growing people. Except for Gregory who is only nine, we all tower over Cory. I’m still the tallest, but my height seems to annoy her these days. She loves Keith’s size, though—her big son. She just hates the fact that he doesn’t live with us anymore.
“I got a room,” he said to me yesterday. We talked, he and I. Cory was with Dorotea Cruz who is one of her best friends and who had just had another baby. The other boys were playing in the street and on the island. Dad had gone to the college, and would be gone overnight. Now, more than ever, it’s safest to go out just at dawn, and not to try coming home until just at dawn the next morning. That’s if you have to go outside at all, which Dad does about once a week. The worst parasites still prowl at night and sleep late into the morning. Yet Keith lives outside.
“I got a room in a building with some other people,” he said. Translation: He and his friends were squatting in an abandoned building. Who were his friends? A gang? A flock of prostitutes? A bunch of astronauts, flying high on drugs? A den of thieves? All of the above? Whenever he came to see us he brought money to Cory and little gifts to Bennett and Gregory.
How could he get money? There’s no honest way.
“Do your friends know how old you are?” I asked.
He grinned. “Hell, no. Why should I tell them that?”
I nodded. “It does help to look older sometimes.”
“You want something to eat?”
“You going to cook for me?”
/> “I’ve cooked for you hundreds of times. Thousands.”
“I know. But you always had to before.”
“Don’t be stupid. You think I couldn’t act the way you did: Skip out on my responsibilities if I felt like it? I don’t feel like it. You want to eat or not?”
“Sure.”
I made rabbit stew and acorn bread—enough for Cory and all the boys when they came in. He hung around and watched me work for a while, then began to talk to me. He’s never done that before. We’ve never, never liked each other, he and I. But he had information I wanted, and he seemed to want to talk. I must have been the safest person he could talk to. He wasn’t afraid of shocking me. He didn’t much care what I thought. And he wasn’t afraid I’d tell Dad or Cory anything he said. Of course, I wouldn’t. Why cause them pain? I’ve never been much for tattling on people, anyway.
“It’s just a nasty old building on the outside,” he was saying of his new home. “You wouldn’t believe how great it looks once you go in, though.”
“Whorehouse or spaceship?” I asked.
“It’s got stuff like you never saw,” he evaded. “TV windows you go through instead of just sitting and looking at. Headsets, belts, and touchrings…you see and feel everything, do anything. Anything! There’s places and things you can get into with that equipment that are insane! You don’t ever have to go into the street except to get food.”
“And whoever owns this stuff took you in?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
He looked at me for a long time, then started to laugh. “Because I can read and write,” he said at last. “And none of them can. They’re all older than me, but not one of them can read or write anything. They stole all this great stuff and they couldn’t even use it. Before I got there they even broke some of it because they couldn’t read the instructions.”
Cory and I had had a hell of a struggle, teaching him to read and write. He had been bored, impatient, anything but eager.