To get along with God,
Consider the consequences of your behavior.
EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING SATURDAY, JULY 26, 2025
TRACY DUNN HAS NOT come home and has not been found by the police. I don’t think she will be. She’s only been gone for a week, but a week outside must be like a week in hell. People vanish outside. They go through our gate like Mr. Yannis did, and everyone waits for them, but they never come back
—or they come back in an urn. I think Tracy Dunn is dead.
Bianca Montoya is pregnant. It isn’t just gossip, it’s true, and it matters to me, somehow. Bianca is 17, unmarried, and out of her mind about Jorge Iturbe who lives at the Ibarra house and is Yolanda Ibarra’s brother.
Jorge admits to being the father. I don’t know why they didn’t just get married before everything got so public. Jorge is 23, and he, at least, ought to have some sense. Anyway, they’re going to get married now. The Ibarra and Iturbe families have been feuding with the Montoyas for a week over this. So stupid. You’d think they had nothing else to do. At least they’re both Latino. No interracial feud this time. Last year when Craig Dunn who’s white and one of the saner members of the Dunn family was caught making love to Siti Moss who’s black and Richard Moss’s oldest daughter to boot, I thought someone was going to get killed. Crazy.
But my point isn’t who’s sleeping with whom or who’s feuding. My point is—my question is—how in the world can anyone get married and make babies with things the way they are now?
I mean, I know people have always gotten married and had kids, but now… Now there’s nowhere to go, nothing to do. A couple gets married, and if they’re lucky, they get a room or a garage to live in—with no hope of
anything better and every reason to expect things to get worse.
Bianca’s chosen life is one of my options. It’s not one that I intend to exercise, but it is pretty much what the neighborhood expects of me—of anyone my age. Grow up a little more, get married, have babies. Curtis Talcott says the new Iturbe family will get half-a-garage to live in after they marry. Jorge’s sister Celia Iturbe Cruz and her husband and baby have the other half. Two couples, and not one paying job among them. The best they could hope for would be to move into some rich people’s compound as domestic servants and work for room and board. There’s no way to save any money or ever do any better.
And what if they wanted to go north, try for a better life in Oregon or Washington or Canada? It would be much harder to travel with a baby or two, and much more dangerous to try to sneak past hostile guards and over state lines or international borders with babies.
I don’t know whether Bianca is brave or stupid. She and her sister are busy altering their mother’s old wedding dress, and everyone’s cooking and
getting ready for a party as though these were the good old days. How can they?
I like Curtis Talcott a lot. Maybe I love him. Sometimes I think I do. He says he loves me. But if all I had to look forward to was marriage to him and babies and poverty that just keeps getting worse, I think I’d kill myself.
Saturday, August 2, 2025
We had a target practice today, and for the first time since I killed the dog, we found another corpse. We all saw it this time—an old woman, naked, maggoty, half-eaten, and beyond disgusting.
That did it for Aura Moss. She says she won’t do any more target shooting. Not ever. I tried talking to her, but she says it’s the men’s job to protect us anyway. She says women shouldn’t have to practice with guns.
“What if you have to protect your younger sisters and brothers?” I asked her. She has to babysit them often enough.
“I already know enough to do that,” she said. “You get rusty without practice,” I said.
“I’m not going out again,” she insisted. “It’s none of your business. I don’t have to go!”
I couldn’t move her. She was afraid, and that made her defensive. Dad said I should have waited until the memory of the corpse faded, then tried to convince her. He’s right, I guess. It’s the Moss attitude that gets me. Richard Moss lets his wives and daughters pull things like this. He works them like
slaves in his gardens and rabbit raising operation and around the house, but he lets them pretend they’re “ladies” when it comes to any community effort. If they don’t want to do their part, he always backs them up. This is dangerous and stupid. It’s a breeding ground for resentment. No Moss woman has ever stood a watch. I’m not the only one who’s noticed.
The two oldest Payne kids went with us for the first time. Bad luck for them. They weren’t scared off, though. Doyle and Margaret. There’s a toughness to them. They’re all right. Their uncle Wardell Parrish hadn’t wanted them to go. He had made nasty comments about Dad’s ego, about private armies and vigilantes, and about his taxes—how he had paid enough in his life to have a right to depend on the police to protect him. Blah, blah, blah. He’s a strange, solitary, whiny man. I’ve heard that he used to be wealthy. Dad agrees with me that he can’t be trusted. But he’s not Doyle and Margaret’s father, and their mother Rosalee Payne doesn’t like anyone telling her how to raise her five kids. The only power she has in the world is her authority over her children and her money. She does have a little money, inherited from her parents. Her brother has somehow lost his. So his trying to tell her what to do or what she shouldn’t let her kids do was a dumb move. He should have known better—though for the kids’ sake, I’m glad he didn’t.
My brother Keith begged to go with us as usual. He’ll turn thirteen in a
few days—August 14—and the thought of waiting two more years until he’s
15 must seem impossible to him. I understand that. Waiting is terrible. Waiting to be older is worse than other kinds of waiting because there’s nothing you can do to make it happen faster. Poor Keith. Poor me.
At least Dad lets Keith shoot at birds and squirrels with the family BB gun, but Keith still complains. “It’s not fair,” he said today for the twentieth or thirtieth time. “Lauren’s a girl and you let her go. You always let her do things. I could learn to help you guard and scare off robbers…” He had once made the mistake of offering to help “shoot robbers” instead of scaring them off, and Dad all but preached him a sermon. Dad almost never hits us, but he can be scary without lifting a finger.
Keith didn’t go today, of course. And our practice went all right until we found the corpse. We didn’t see any dogs this time. Most upsetting to me, though, there were a few more rag, stick, cardboard, and palm frond shacks along the way into the hills along River Street. There always seem to be more. They’ve never bothered us beyond begging and cursing, but they always stare so. It gets harder to ride past them. They’re living skeletons, some of them. Skin and bones and a few teeth. They eat whatever they can find up there.
Sometimes I dream about the way they stare at us.
Back at home, my brother Keith slipped out of the neighborhood—out
through the front gates and away. He stole Cory’s key and took off on his own. Dad and I didn’t know until we got home. Keith was still gone, and by then Cory knew he must be outside. She had checked with others in the neighborhood and two of the Dunn kids, twins Allison and Marie, age six, said they saw him go out the gate. That was when Cory went home and discovered that her key was gone.
Dad, tired and angry and scared, was going to go right back out to look for him, but Keith got home just as Dad was leaving. Cory, Marcus, and I had gone to the front porch with Dad, all three of us speculating about where Keith had gone, and Marcus and I volunteering to go with Dad to help search. It was almost dark.
“You get back in that house and stay there,” Dad said. “It’s bad enough to have one of you out there.” He checked the submachine gun, made sure it was fully loaded.
“Dad, look,” I said. I had spotted something moving three houses down— quick, shadowy movement alongside the Garfield porch. I didn’t know it was Keith. I was attracted by its furtiveness. Someone was sneaking around, trying to hide.
Dad was quick enough to see the movement before it was hidden by the Garfield house. He got up at once, took the gun, and went to check. The rest of us watched and waited.
Moments later Cory said she heard an odd noise in the house. I was too focused on Dad and what was going on outside to hear what she heard, or to pay any attention to her. She went in. Marcus and I were still on the porch when she screamed.
Marcus and I glanced at each other, then at the front door. Marcus lunged for the door. I yelled for Dad. Dad was out of sight, but I heard him answer my call.
“Come quick,” I shouted, then I ran into the house.
Cory, Marcus, Bennett, and Gregory were in the kitchen, clustered around Keith. Keith was sprawled, panting, on the floor, wearing only his underpants. He was scraped and bruised, bleeding, and filthy. Cory knelt beside him, examining him, questioning him, crying.
“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.
