Changes.
The galaxies move through space. The stars ignite,
burn, age, cool,
Evolving.
God is Change. God prevails.
EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING FRIDAY, AUGUST 27, 2027
(from notes expanded SUNDAY, AUGUST 29)
Earthquake today.
It hit early this morning just as we were beginning the day’s walk, and it was a strong one. The ground itself gave a low, grating rumble like buried thunder. It jerked and shuddered, then seemed to drop. I’m sure it did drop, though I don’t know how far. Once the shaking stopped, everything looked the same—except for sudden patches of dust thrown up here and there in the brown hills around us.
Several people screamed or shouted during the quake. Some, burdened by heavy packs, lost their footing and fell into the dirt or onto the broken asphalt. Travis, with Dominic on his chest and a heavy pack on his back was almost one of these. He stumbled, staggered, and managed somehow to catch himself. The baby, unhurt, but jolted by the sudden shaking, began to cry, adding to the noise of two older children walking nearby, the sudden talking of almost everyone, and the gasps of an old man who had fallen during the quake.
I put aside my usual suspicions and went to see whether the old man was
all right—not that I could have done much to help him if he hadn’t been. I retrieved his cane for him—it had landed beyond his reach—and helped him up. He was as light as a child, thin, toothless, and frightened of me.
I gave him a pat on the shoulder and sent him on his way, checking when his back was turned to see that he hadn’t lifted anything. The world was full of thieves. Old people and young kids were often pickpockets.
Nothing missing.
Another man nearby smiled at me—an older, but not yet old black man who still had his teeth, and who pushed his belongings in twin saddlebags hanging from a small, sturdy metal-framed cart. He didn’t say anything, but I liked his smile. I smiled back. Then I remembered that I was supposed to be a man, and wondered whether he had seen through my disguise. Not that it mattered.
I went back to my group where Zahra and Natividad were comforting Dominic and Harry was picking up something from the roadside. I went to Harry, and saw that he had found a filthy rag knotted into a small, tight ball around something. Harry tore the rotten cloth and a roll of money fell out into his hands. Hundred-dollar bills. Two or three dozen of them.
“Put it away!” I whispered.
He pushed the money into a deep pants pocket. “New shoes,” he whispered. “Good ones, and other things. Do you need anything?”
I had promised to buy him a new pair of shoes as soon as we reached a dependable store. His were worn out. Now another idea occurred to me. “If you have enough,” I whispered, “buy yourself a gun. I’ll still get your shoes. You get a gun!” Then I spoke to the others, ignoring his surprise. “Is everyone all right?”
Everyone was. Dominic was happy again, riding now on his mother’s back, and playing with her hair. Zahra was readjusting her pack, and Travis had gone on and was taking a look at the small community ahead. This was farm country. We’d passed through nothing for days except small, dying towns, withering roadside communities and farms, some working, some abandoned and growing weeds.
We walked forward toward Travis. “Fire,” he said as we approached.
One house down the hill from the road smoked from several of its windows. Already people from the highway had begun to drift down toward it. Trouble. The people who owned the house might manage to put out their fire and still be overwhelmed by scavengers.
“Let’s get away from here,” I said. “The people down there are still strong, and they’re going to feel besieged soon. They’ll fight back.”
“We might find something we can use,” Zahra argued.
“There’s nothing down there worth our getting shot over,” I said. “Let’s go!” I led the way past the small community and we were almost clear of it when the gunfire began.
There were people still on the road with us, but many had flooded down into the small community to steal. The crowd would not confine its attention to the one burning house, and all the households would have to resist.
There were more shots behind us—first single shots, then an uneven crackling of exchanged fire, then the unmistakable chatter of automatic weapons fire. We walked faster, hoping that we were beyond the range of anything aimed in our direction.
“Shit!” Zahra whispered, keeping up with me. “I should have known that was going to happen. People out here in the middle of nowhere gotta be tough.”
“I don’t think their toughness will get them through this day, though,” I said, looking back. There was much more smoke rising now, and it was rising from more than one place. Distant shouts and screams mixed with the gunfire. Stupid place to put a naked little community. They should have hidden their homes away in the mountains where few strangers would ever see them. That was something for me to keep in mind. All the people of this community could do now was take a few of their tormentors with them. Tomorrow the survivors of this place would be on the road with scraps of their belongings on their backs.
It’s odd, but I don’t think anyone on the road would have thought of attacking that community en masse like that if the earthquake—or something
—had not started a fire. One small fire was the weakness that gave scavengers permission to devastate the community—which they were no doubt doing now. The shooting could scare away some, kill or wound others, and make the remainder very angry. If the people of the community chose to live in such a dangerous place, they should have set up overwhelming defenses—a line of explosive charges and incendiaries, that kind of thing. Only power that strong, that destructive, that sudden would scare attackers off, would drive them away in a panic more overwhelming than the greed and the need that had drawn them in the first place. If the people of the community were without explosives, they should have grabbed their money and their kids and run like crazy the moment they saw the horde coming. They knew the hills better than migrating scavengers could. They should have had hiding places already prepared or at least been able to lose themselves among the hills while scavengers were ransacking their homes. But they had done none of this. And now vast thick clouds of smoke rose behind us, drawing even more
scavengers.
“Whole world’s gone crazy,” a voice near me said, and I knew before I looked that it was the man with the saddlebagged cart. We’d slowed down a little, looking back, and he had caught up. He too had had the sense not to try to go scavenging in the little community. He didn’t look like a man who scavenged. His clothes were dirty and ordinary, but they fit him well and they looked almost new. His jeans were still dark blue, and still creased down the legs. His red, short-sleeved shirt still had all its buttons. He wore expensive walking shoes and had had, not too long ago, an expensive professional haircut. What was he doing out here on the road, pushing a cart? A rich pauper—or at least, a once-rich pauper. He had a short, full, salt and pepper beard. I decided that I liked his looks as much as I had before. What a handsome old man.
Had the world gone crazy?
“From what I’ve read,” I said to him, “the world goes crazy every three or four decades. The trick is to survive until it goes sane again.” I was showing off my education and background; I admit it. But the old man seemed unimpressed.
“The nineteen nineties were crazy,” he said, “but they were rich. Nothing like this bad. I don’t think it’s ever been this bad. Those people, those animals back there…”
“I don’t see how they can act that way,” Natividad said. “I wish we could call the police—whoever the police are around here. The householders back there should call.”
“It wouldn’t do any good,” I said. “Even if the cops came today instead of tomorrow, they’d just add to the death toll.”
We walked on, the stranger walking with us. He seemed content to walk with us. He could have dropped back or walked on ahead since he didn’t have to carry his load. As long as he stayed on the road, he could speed along. But he stuck with us. I talked to him, introduced myself and learned that his name was Bankole—Taylor Franklin Bankole. Our last names were an instant bond between us. We’re both descended from men who assumed African surnames back during the 1960s. His father and my grandfather had had their names legally changed, and both had chosen Yoruba replacement names.
“Most people chose Swahili names in the ’60s,” Bankole told me. He wanted to be called Bankole. “My father had to do something different. All his life he had to be different.”
“I don’t know my grandfather’s reasons,” I said. “His last name was Broome before he changed it, and that was no loss. But why he chose Olamina…? Even my father didn’t know. He made the change before my
father was born, so my father was always Olamina, and so were we.”
Bankole was one year older than my father. He had been born in 1970, and he was, according to him, too damn old to be tramping along a highway with everything he owned in a couple of saddlebags. He was 57. I caught myself wishing he were younger so he would live longer.
Old or not, he heard the two girls calling for help sooner than we did.
There was a road, more dirt than asphalt, running below and alongside the highway, then veering away from the highway into the hills. Up that road was a half-collapsed house, the dust of its collapse still hanging over it. It couldn’t have been much of a house before it fell in. Now it was rubble. And once Bankole alerted us, we could hear faint shouts from it.
“Sounds like women,” Harry said.
I sighed. “Let’s go see. It might just be a matter of pushing some wood off them or something.”
Harry caught me by the shoulder. “You sure?”
“Yeah.” I took the gun out and gave it to him in case someone else’s pain made me useless. “Watch our backs,” I said.
We went in wary and tentative, knowing that a call for help could be false, could lure people to their attackers. A few other people followed us off the road, and Harry hung back, staying between them and us. Bankole shoved his cart along, keeping up with me.
There were two voices calling from the rubble. Both sounded like women. One was pleading, the other cursing. We located them by the sound of their voices, then Zahra, Travis and I began throwing off rubble—dry, broken wood, plaster, plastic, and brick from an ancient chimney. Bankole stood with Harry, watching, and looking formidable. Did he have a gun? I hoped he did. We were drawing a small audience of hungry-eyed scavengers. Most people looked to see what we were doing, and went on. A few stayed and stared. If the women had been trapped since the earthquake, it was surprising that no one had come already to steal their belongings and set fire to the rubble, leaving them in it. I hoped we would be able to get the women out and get back on the highway before someone decided to rush us. No doubt they already would have if there had been anything of value in sight.
Natividad spoke to Bankole, then put Dominic in one of his saddlebags
and felt to see that her knife was still in her pocket. I didn’t like that much. Better she should keep wearing the baby so we could leave at a run if she had to.
We found a pale leg, bruised and bleeding but unbroken, pinned under a beam. A whole section of wall and ceiling plus some of the chimney had fallen on these women. We moved the loose stuff then worked together to lift
heavier pieces. At last we dragged the women out by their exposed limbs—an arm and a leg for one, both legs for the other. I didn’t enjoy it any more than they did.
On the other hand, it wasn’t that bad. The women had lost some skin here and there, and one was bleeding from the nose and mouth. She spat out blood and a couple of teeth and cursed and tried to get up. I let Zahra help her up. All I wanted to do now was get away from here.
The other one, face wet with tears, just sat and stared at us. She was quiet now in a blank, unnatural way. Too quiet. When Travis tried to help her up, she cringed and cried out. Travis let her alone. She didn’t seem to be hurt beyond a few scratches, but she might have hit her head. She might be in shock.
“Where’s your stuff?” Zahra was asking the bloody one. “We’re going to have to get away from here fast.”
I rubbed my mouth, trying to get past an irrational certainty that two of my own teeth were gone. I felt horrible—scraped and bruised and throbbing, yet whole and unbroken, undamaged in any major way I just wanted to huddle somewhere until I felt less miserable. I took a deep breath and went to the frightened, cringing woman.
“Can you understand me?” I asked.
She looked at me, then looked around, saw her companion wiping away blood with a grimy hand, and tried to get up and run to her. She tripped, started to fall, and I caught her, grateful that she wasn’t every big.
“Your legs are all right,” I said, “but take it easy. We have to get out of here soon, and you’ve got to be able to walk.”
“Who are you?” she asked.
“A total stranger,” I said. “Try to walk.” “There was an earthquake.”
“Yeah. Walk!”
She took a shaky step away from me, then another. She staggered over to her friend. “Allie?” she said.
Her friend saw her, stumbled to her, hugged her, smeared her with blood. “Jill! Thank God!”
“Here’s their stuff,” Travis said. “Let’s get them out of here while we still can.”
We made them walk a little more, tried to make them see and understand the danger of staying where we were. We couldn’t drag them with us, and what would have been the point of digging them out, then leaving them at the mercy of scavengers. They had to walk along with us until they were stronger and able to take care of themselves.
“Okay” the bloody one said. She was the smaller and tougher of the two, not that there was that much physical difference between them. Two medium- size, brown-haired white women in their twenties. They might be sisters.
“Okay,” the bloody one repeated. “Let’s get out of here.” She was walking without limping or staggering now, though her companion was less steady.
“Give me my stuff,” she said.
Travis waved her toward two dusty sleepsack packs. She put one on her back, then looked at the other and at her companion.
“I can carry it,” the other woman said. “I’m all right.”
She wasn’t, but she had to carry her own things. No one could carry a double pack for long. No one could fight while carrying a double pack.
There were a dozen people standing around staring as we brought the two women out. Harry walked ahead of us, gun in hand. Something about him said with great clarity that he would kill. If he were pushed even a little, he would kill. I hadn’t seen him that way before. It was impressive and frightening and wrong. Right for the situation and the moment, but wrong for Harry. He wasn’t the kind of man who ought ever to look that way.
When had I begun thinking of him as a man rather than a boy? What the hell. We’re all men and women now, not kids anymore. Shit.
Bankole walked behind, looking even more formidable than Harry in spite of his graying hair and beard. He had a gun in his hand. I had gotten a look at it as I walked past him. Another automatic—perhaps a nine millimeter. I hoped he was good with it.
Natividad pushed his cart along just ahead of him with Dominic still in one of the bags. Travis walked beside her, guarding her and the baby.
I walked with the two women, fearful that one of them might fall or that some fool might grab one. The one called Allie was still bleeding, spitting blood and wiping her bloody nose with a bloody arm. And the one called Jill still looked dull and shaky. Allie and I kept Jill between us.
Before the attack began, I knew it would happen. Helping the two trapped women had made us targets. We might already have been attacked if the community down the road had not drawn off so many of the most violent, desperate people. The weak would be attacked today. The quake had set the mood. And one attack could trigger others.
We could only try to be ready.
Out of the blue, a man grabbed Zahra. She’s small, and must have looked weak as well as beautiful.
An instant later, someone grabbed me. I was spun around, and I tripped and started to fall. It was that stupid. Before anyone could hit me, I tripped
and fell. But because my attacker had pulled me toward him, I fell against him. I dragged him down with me. Somehow, I managed to get my knife out. I flicked it open. I jabbed it upward into my attacker’s body.
The six inch blade went in to the hilt. Then, in empathic agony, I jerked it out again.
I can’t describe the pain.
The others told me later that I screamed as they’d never heard anyone scream. I’m not surprised. Nothing has ever hurt me that much before.
After a while, the agony in my chest ebbed and died. That is, the man on top of me bled and died. Not until then could I begin to be aware of something other than pain.
The first thing I heard was Dominic, crying.
I understood then that I had also heard shots fired—several shots. Where was everyone? Were they wounded?
Dead? Being held prisoner?
I kept my body still beneath the dead man. He was painfully heavy as deadweight, and his body odor was nauseating. He had bled all over my chest, and, if my nose was any judge, in death, he had urinated on me. Yet I didn’t dare move until I understood the situation.
I opened my eyes just a little.
Before I could understand what I was seeing, someone hauled the stinking dead man off me. I found myself looking into two worried faces: Harry and Bankole.
I coughed and tried to get up, but Bankole held me down. “Are you hurt anywhere?” he demanded.
“No, I’m all right,” I said. I saw Harry staring at all the blood, and I added, “Don’t worry. The other guy did all the bleeding.”
They helped me up, and I discovered I was right. The dead man had urinated on me. I was almost frantic with the need to strip off my filthy clothes and wash. But that had to wait. No matter how disgusting I was, I wouldn’t undress in daylight where I could be seen. I’d had enough trouble for one day.
I looked around, saw Travis and Natividad comforting Dominic who was still screaming. Zahra was with the two new girls, standing guard beside them as they sat on the ground.
“Are those two okay?” I asked.
Harry nodded. “They’re scared and shaken up, but they’re all right. Everyone’s all right—except him and his friends.” He gestured toward the dead man. There were three more dead lying nearby.
“There were some wounded,” Harry said. “We let them go.”
I nodded. “We’d better strip these bodies and go, too. We’re too obvious here from the highway.”
We did a quick, thorough job, searching everything except body cavities. We weren’t needy enough to do that yet. Then, at Zahra’s insistence, I did go behind the ruined house for a quick change of clothing. She took the gun from Harry and stood watch for me.
“You’re bloody,” she said. “If people think you’re wounded, they might jump you. This ain’t a good day to look like you got something wrong with you.”
I suspected that she was right. Anyway, it was a pleasure to have her talk me into something I already wanted so much to do.
I put my filthy, wet clothes into a plastic bag, sealed it, and stuffed it into my pack. If any of the dead had owned clothing that would fit me, and that was still in wearable condition, I would have thrown mine away. As it was, I would keep them and wash them the next time we came to a water station or a store that permitted washing. We had collected money from the corpses, but it would be best to use that for necessities.
We had taken about twenty-five hundred dollars in all from the four corpses—along with two knives that we could sell or pass on to the two girls, and one gun pulled by a man Harry had shot. The gun turned out to be an empty, dirty Beretta nine millimeter. Its owner had had no ammunition, but we can buy that—maybe from Bankole. For that we will spend money. I had found a few pieces of jewelry in the pocket of the man who attacked me—two gold rings, a necklace of polished blue stones that I thought were lapis lazuli, and a single earring which turned out to be a radio. The radio we would keep. It could give us information about the world beyond the highway. It would be good not to be cut off any longer. I wondered who my attacker had robbed to get it.
All four of the corpses had little plastic pill boxes hidden somewhere on
them. Two boxes contained a couple of pills each. The other two were empty. So these people who carried neither food nor water nor adequate weapons did carry pills when they could steal them or steal enough to buy them. Junkies. What was their drug of choice, I wondered. Pyro? For the first time in days, I found myself thinking of my brother Keith. Had he dealt in the round purple pills we kept finding on people who attacked us? Was that why he died?
A few miles later along the highway, we saw some cops in cars, heading south toward what must now be a burned out hulk of a community with a lot of corpses. Perhaps the cops would arrest a few late-arriving scavengers. Perhaps they would scavenge a little themselves. Or perhaps they would just have a look and drive away. What had cops done for my community when it
was burning? Nothing.
The two women we’d dug out of the rubble want to stay with us. Allison and Jillian Gilchrist are their names. They are sisters, 24 and 25 years old, poor, running away from a life of prostitution. Their pimp was their father. The house that had fallen on them was empty when they took shelter in it the night before. It looked long abandoned.
“Abandoned buildings are traps,” Zahra told them as we walked. “Out here in the middle of nowhere, they’re targets for all kinds of people.”
“Nobody bothered us,” Jill said. “But then the house fell on us, and nobody helped us either, until you guys came along.”
“You’re very fortunate,” Bankole told her. He was still with us, and walking next to me. “People don’t help each other much out here.”
“We know,” Jill admitted. “We’re grateful. Who are you guys, anyway?”
Harry gave her an odd little smile. “Earthseed,” he said, and glanced at me. You have to watch out for Harry when he smiles that way.
“What’s Earthseed?” Jill asked, right on cue. She had let Harry direct her gaze to me.
“We share some ideas,” I said. “We intend to settle up north, and found a community.”
“Where up north?” Allie demanded. Her mouth was still hurting, and I felt it more when I paid attention to her. At least her bleeding had almost stopped. “We’re looking for jobs that pay salaries and we’re watching water
prices,” I said. “We want to settle where water isn’t such a big problem.” “Water’s a problem everywhere,” she proclaimed. Then, “What are you?
Some kind of cult or something?”
“We believe in some of the same things,” I said.
She turned to stare at me with what looked like hostility. “I think religion is dog shit,” she announced. “It’s either phony or crazy.”
I shrugged. “You can travel with us or you can walk away.”
“But what the hell do you stand for?” she demanded. “What do you pray to?”
“Ourselves,” I said. “What else is there?”
She turned away in disgust, then turned back. “Do we have to join your cult if we travel with you?”
“No.”
“All right then!” She turned her back and walked ahead of me as though she’d won something.
I raised my voice just enough to startle and projected it at the back of her head. I said, “We risked ourselves for you today.”
She jumped, but refused to look back.
I continued. “You don’t owe us anything for that. It isn’t something you could buy from us. But if you travel with us, and there’s trouble, you stand by us, stand with us. Now will you do that or not?”
Allie swung around, stiff with anger. She stopped right in front of me and stood there.
I didn’t stop or turn. It wasn’t a time for giving way. I needed to know what her pride and anger might drive her to. How much of that apparent hostility of hers was real, and how much might be due to her pain? Was she going to be more trouble than she was worth?
When she realized that I meant to walk over her if I had to, that I would do it, she slid around me to walk beside me as though she had intended to do that all along.
“If you hadn’t been the ones to dig us out,” she said, “we wouldn’t bother with you at all.” She drew a deep, ragged breath. “We know how to pull our own weight. We can help our friends and fight our enemies. We’ve been doing that since we were kids.”
I looked at her, thinking of the little that she and her sister had told us about their lives: prostitution, pimp father… Hell of a story if it were true. No doubt the details would be even more interesting. How had they gotten away from their father, anyway? They would bear watching, but they might turn out to be worth something.
“Welcome,” I said.
She stared at me, nodded, then walked ahead of me in long quick strides. Her sister, who had dropped to walk near us while we were talking, now walked faster to join her. And Zahra, who had dropped back to keep an eye on the sister, grinned at me and shook her head. She went up to join Harry who was leading the group.
Bankole came up beside me again, and I realized he had gotten out of the way as soon as he saw trouble between Allie and me.
“One fight a day is enough for me,” he said when he saw me looking at him.
I smiled. “Thank you for standing by us back there.”
He shrugged. “I was surprised to see that anyone else cared what happened to a couple of strangers.”
“You cared.”
“Yes. That kind of thing will get me killed someday. If you don’t mind, I’d like to travel with your group, too.”
“You have been. You’re welcome.”
“Thank you,” he said, and smiled back at me. He had clear eyes with deep brown irises—attractive eyes. I like him too much already. I’ll have to be
careful.
Late today we reached Salinas, a small city that seemed little touched by the quake and its aftershocks. The ground has been shuddering off and on all day. Also, Salinas seemed untouched by the hordes of overeager scavengers that we had been seeing since that first burning community this morning. That was a surprise. Almost all of the smaller communities we’d passed had been burning and swarming with scavengers. It was as though the quake had given yesterday’s quiet, plodding paupers permission to go animal and prey on anyone who still lives in a house.
I suspected that the bulk of the predatory scavengers were still behind us, still killing and dying and fighting over the spoils. I’ve never worked as hard at not seeing what was going on around me as I did today. The smoke and the noise helped veil things from me. I had enough to do dealing with Allie’s throbbing face and mouth and the ambient misery of the highway.
We were tired when we reached Salinas, but we had decided to walk on after resupplying and washing. We didn’t want to be in town when the worst of the scavengers arrived. They might be calm, tired after their day of burning and stealing, but I doubted it. I thought they would be drunk with power and hungry for more. As Bankole said, “Once people get the idea that it’s all right to take what you want and destroy the rest, who knows when they’ll stop.”
But Salinas looked well-armed. Cops had parked all along the shoulders of the highway, staring at us, some holding their shotguns or automatic rifles as though they’d love an excuse to use them. Maybe they knew what was coming.
We needed to resupply, but we didn’t know whether we would be allowed to. Salinas had the look of a “stay on the road” type town—the kind that wanted you gone by sundown unless you lived there. This week and last, we had run across a few little towns like that.
But no one stopped us when we headed off the road to a store. There were only a few people on the road now, and the cops were able to watch all of us. I saw them watching us in particular, but they didn’t stop us. We were quiet. We were women and a baby as well as men, and three of us were white. I don’t think any of that harmed us in their eyes.
The security guards in the stores were as well-armed as the cops—shot- guns and automatic rifles, a couple of machine guns on tripods in cubicles above us. Bankole said he could remember a time when security guards had revolvers or nothing but clubs. My father used to talk like that.
Some of the guards either weren’t very well trained—or they were almost as power-drunk as the scavengers. They pointed their guns at us. It was crazy.
Two or three of us walked into a store and two or three guns were trained on us. We didn’t know what was going on at first. We froze, staring, waiting to see what was going to happen.
The guys behind the guns laughed. One of them said, “Buy something or get the fuck out!”
We got out. These were little stores. There were plenty of them to choose from. Some of them turned out to have sane guards. I couldn’t help wondering how many accidents the crazy guards have with those guns. I suppose that after the fact, every accident was an armed robber with obvious homicidal inclinations.
The guards at the water station seemed calm and professional. They kept their guns down and confined themselves to cursing people to speed them along. We felt safe enough not only to buy water and give our clothes a quick wash and dry, but to rent a couple of cubicles—men’s and women’s—and sponge ourselves off from a basin of water each. That settled the question of my sex for any of the new people who hadn’t already figured it out.
At last, somewhat cleaner, resupplied with food, water, ammunition for all three guns, and, by the way, condoms for my own future, we headed out of town. On our way, we passed through a small street market at the edge of town. It was just a few people with their merchandise—mostly junk— scattered on tables or on filthy rags spread on the bare asphalt. Bankole spotted the rifle on one of the tables.
It was an antique—a bolt action Winchester, empty of course, with a five- round capacity. It would be, as Bankole admitted, slow. But he liked it. He inspected it with eyes and fingers and bargained with the well-armed old man and woman who were offering it for sale. They had one of the cleaner tables with merchandise laid out in a neat pattern—a small, manual typewriter; a stack of books; a few hand tools, worn, but clean; two knives in worn leather sheaths; a couple of pots, and the rifle with sling and scope.
While Bankole haggled with the man over the rifle, I bought the pots from the woman. I would get Bankole to carry them in his cart. They were large enough to contain soup or stew or hot cereal for all of us at once. We were nine now, and bigger pots made sense. Then I joined Harry at the stack of books.
There was no nonfiction. I bought a fat anthology of poetry and Harry bought a western novel. The others, either from lack of money or from lack of interest ignored the books. I would have bought more if I could have carried them. My pack was already about as heavy as I thought I could stand, and still walk all day.
Our bargaining finished, we stood away from the table to wait for
Bankole. And Bankole surprised us.
He got the old man down to a price he seemed to think was fair, then he called us over. “Any of you know how to handle a relic like this?” he asked.
Well, Harry and I did, and he had us look the rifle over. In the end, everyone had a look at it, some with obvious awkwardness and some with familiarity. Back in the neighborhood, Harry and I had practiced with the guns of other households—rifles and shotguns as well as handguns. Whatever was legal back home was shared, at least in practice sessions. My father had wanted us to be familiar with whatever weapons might be available. Harry and I were both good, competent shots, but we’d never bought a used gun. I liked the rifle, I liked the look and feel of it, but that didn’t mean much. Harry seemed to like it, too. Same problem.
“Come over here,” Bankole said. He herded us out of earshot of the old couple. “You should buy that gun,” he told us. “You took enough money off those four junkies to pay the price I got that guy to agree to. You need at least one accurate, long-range weapon, and this is a good one.”
“That money would buy a lot of food,” Travis said.
Bankole nodded. “Yes, but only living people need food. You buy this, and it will pay for itself the first time you need it. Anyone who doesn’t know how to use it, I’ll teach. My father and I used to hunt deer with guns just like this.”
“It’s an antique,” Harry said. “If it were automatic…”
“If it were automatic, you couldn’t afford it.” Bankole shrugged. “This thing is cheap because it’s old and it’s legal.”
“And it’s slow,” Zahra said. “And if you think that old guy’s price is cheap, you’re crazy.”
“I know I’m new here,” Allie said, “but I agree with Bankole. You guys are good with your handguns, but sooner or later, you’re going to meet someone who sits out of handgun range and picks you off. Picks us off.”
“And this rifle is going to save us?” Zahra demanded.
“I doubt that it would save us,” I said. “But with a decent shot behind it, it might give us a chance.” I looked at Bankole. “You hit any of those deer?”
He smiled. “One or two.”
I did not return the smile. “Why don’t you buy the rifle for yourself?”
“I can’t afford it,” he said. “I’ve got enough money to keep me going and take care of necessities for a while. Everything else that I had was stolen from me or burned.”
I didn’t quite believe him. But then, no one knew how much money I had either. In a way, I suppose he was asking about our solvency. Did we have enough money to spend an unexpected windfall on an old rifle? And what did
he intend to do if we did? I hoped, not for the first time, that he wasn’t just a handsome thief. Yet I did like the gun, and we do need it.
“Harry and I are decent shots, too,” I said to the group. “I like the feel of this gun, and it’s the best we can afford right now. Has anyone seen any real trouble with it?”
They looked at one another. No one answered.
“It just needs a cleaning and some 30-06 ammunition,” Bankole said. “It’s been stored for a while, but it appears to have been well maintained. If you buy it, I think I can manage to buy a cleaning kit and some ammunition.”
At that, I spoke up before anyone else could. “If we buy, that’s a deal.
Who else can handle the rifle?”
“I can,” Natividad said. And when that won her a few surprised looks, she smiled. “I had no brothers. My father needed to teach someone.”
“We never had a chance to do any shooting,” Allie said. “But we can learn.”
Jill nodded. “I always wanted to learn,” she said.
“I’ll have to learn, too,” Travis admitted. “Where I grew up, guns were either locked away or carried by hired guards.”
“Let’s go buy it, then,” I said. “And let’s get out of here. The sun will be down soon.”
Bankole kept his word, bought cleaning things and plenty of ammunition
—insisted on buying them before we left town, because, as he said, “Who knows when we’ll need it, or when we’ll find other people willing to sell it to us.”
Once that was settled, we left town.
As we left, Harry carried the new rifle and Zahra carried the Beretta, both empty and in need of attention before we loaded them. Only Bankole and I carried fully loaded guns. I led the group and he brought up the rear. It was getting dark. Behind us in the distance, we could hear gunfire and the dull thunder of small explosions.
