Parable of the Sower (16 page)

I spoke at services this morning. Maybe it was my duty. I don’t know. People came for church, all uncertain and upset, not knowing what they should do. I think they wanted to draw together, and they had years of habit drawing them together at our house on Sunday morning. They were uncertain and hesitant, but they came.

Both Wyatt Talcott and Jay Garfield offered to speak. Both did say a few words, both informally eulogizing my father, though neither admitted that that was what they were doing. I was afraid everyone would do that and the service would become an impossible impromptu funeral. When I stood up, it wasn’t just to say a couple of words. I meant to give them something they could take home—something that might make them feel that enough had been said for today.

I thanked them all for the ongoing—emphasize ongoing—efforts to find my father. Then…well, then I talked about perseverance. I preached a sermon about perseverance if an unordained kid can be said to preach a sermon. No one was going to stop me. Cory was the only one who might have tried, but Cory was in a kind of walking coma. She wasn’t doing anything she didn’t have to do.

So I preached from Luke, chapter eighteen, verses one through eight: the parable of the importunate widow. It’s one I’ve always liked. A widow is so persistent in her demands for justice that she overcomes the resistance of a judge who fears neither God nor man. She wears him down.

Moral: The weak can overcome the strong if the weak persist. Persisting isn’t always safe, but it’s often necessary.

My father and the adults present had created and maintained our community in spite of the scarcity and the violence outside. Now, with my father or without him, that community had to go on, hold together, survive. I talked about my nightmares and the source of those nightmares. Some people might not have wanted their kids to hear things like that, but I didn’t care. If Keith had known more, maybe he would still be alive. But I didn’t mention Keith. People could say what happened to Keith was his own fault. No one could say that about Dad. I didn’t want anyone to be able to say it about this community some day.

“Those nightmares of mine are our future if we fail one another,” I said, winding up. “Starvation, agony at the hands of people who aren’t human any more. Dismemberment. Death.

“We have God and we have each other. We have our island community, fragile, and yet a fortress. Sometimes it seems too small and too weak to survive. And like the widow in Christ’s parable, its enemies fear neither God nor man. But also like the widow, it persists.
We persist.
This is our place, no matter what.”

That was my message. I left it there, hanging before them with an unfinished feel to it. I could feel them expecting more, then realizing that I wasn’t going to say more, then biting down on what I had said.

At just the right moment, Kayla Talcott began an old song. Others took it up, singing slowly, but with feeling: “We shall not, we shall not be moved…”

I think this might have sounded weak or even pitiful somehow if it had been begun by a lesser voice. I think I might have sang it weakly. I’m only a fair singer. Kayla, on the other hand, has a big voice, beautiful, clear, and able to do everything she asks of it. Also, Kayla has a reputation for not moving unless she wants to.

Later, as she was leaving, I thanked her.

She looked at me. I’d grown past her years ago, and she had to look up. “Good job,” she said, and nodded and walked away toward her house. I love her.

I got other compliments today, and I think they were sincere. Most said, in one way or another, “You’re right,” and “I didn’t know you could preach like that,” and “Your father would be proud of you.”

Yeah, I hope so. I did it for him. He built this bunch of houses into a community. And now, he’s probably dead. I wouldn’t let them bury him, but I know. I’m no good at denial and self-deception. That was Dad’s funeral that I was preaching—his and the community’s. Because as much as I want all that I said to be true, it isn’t. We’ll be moved, all right. It’s just a matter of when, by whom, and in how many pieces.

❏ ❏ ❏

EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING

S
ATURDAY
, D
ECEMBER
19, 2026

T
ODAY
R
EVEREND
M
ATTHEW
R
OBINSON
in whose church I was baptized came to preach my fathers funeral. Cory made the arrangements. There was no body, no urn. No one knows what happened to my father. Neither we nor the police have been able to find out. We’re sure he’s dead. He would find a way to come home if he were alive, so we’re certain he’s dead.

No, we’re not certain. We’re not certain at all. Is he sick somewhere? Hurt? Held against his will for who knows what reason by who knows what monsters?

This is worse than when Keith died. So much worse. As horrible as that was, we knew he was dead. Whatever he suffered, we knew he wasn’t suffering any more. Not in this world, anyway. We
knew.
Now, we don’t know anything. He is dead. But we don’t
know!

The Dunns must of felt this when Tracy vanished. Crazy as they are, crazy as she was, they must have felt this. What do they feel now? Tracy never came back. If she’s not dead, what must be happening to her outside? A girl alone only faced one kind of future outside. I intend to go out posing as a man when I go.

How will they feel when I go? I’ll be dead to them—to Cory, the boys, the neighborhood. They’ll hope I’m dead, considering the supposed alternative. Thank Dad for my tallness and my strength.

I won’t have to leave Dad now. He’s already left me. He was 57. What reason would strangers have for keeping a 57-year-old man alive? Once they’d robbed him, they would either let him go or kill him. If they let him go, he’d come home, walking, limping, crawling.

So he’s dead.

That’s that.

It has to be.

T
UESDAY
, D
ECEMBER
22, 2026

The Garfields left for Olivar today—Phillida, Jay, and Joanne. An armored KSF truck came from Olivar to collect them and their belongings. The adults of the community had all they could do to keep the little kids from climbing all over the truck and pestering the drivers to death. Most kids my brothers’ ages have never been close to a truck that runs. Some of the younger Moss kids have never seen a truck of any kind. The Moss kids weren’t even allowed to visit the Yannis house back when the Yannis television still worked.

The two guys from KSF were patient once they realized the kids weren’t thieves or vandals. Those two guys with their uniforms, pistols, whips, and clubs, looked more like cops than movers. No doubt they had even more substantial weapons in the truck. My brother Bennett said he saw bigger guns mounted inside the truck when he climbed onto the hood. But when you consider how much a truck that size is worth, and how many people might want to relieve them of it and its contents, I guess the weaponry isn’t surprising.

The two movers were a black and a white, and I could see that Cory considered that hopeful. Maybe Olivar wouldn’t be the white enclave that Dad had expected.

Cory cornered the black guy and talked to him for as long as he would let her. Will she try now to get us into Olivar? I think she will. After all, without Dad’s salary, she’ll have to do something. I don’t think we have a prayer of being accepted. The insurance company isn’t going to pay—or not for a long time. Its people choose not to believe that Dad is dead. Without proof he can’t be declared legally dead for seven years. Can they hold on to our money for that long? I don’t know, but it wouldn’t surprise me. We could starve many times over in seven years. And Cory must know she alone can’t earn enough in Olivar to feed and house us. Is she hoping to get work for me, too? I don’t know what we’re going to do.

Joanne and I cried all over each other, saying good-bye. We promised to phone each other, to stay in touch. I don’t think we’ll be able to. It costs extra to call Olivar. We won’t be able to afford it. I don’t think she will either. Chances are, I’ll never see her again. The people I’ve grown up with are falling out of my life, one by one.

After the truck pulled away, I found Curtis and took him back to the old darkroom to make love. We hadn’t done it for a long time, and I needed it. I wish I could imagine just marrying Curtis, staying here, and having a decent life with him.

It isn’t possible. Even if there were no Earthseed, it wouldn’t be possible. I would almost be doing the family a favor if I left now—one less mouth to feed. Unless I could somehow get a job…

“We’ve got to get out of here, too,” Curtis said as we lay together afterward, lingering, tempting fate, not wanting to lose the feel of each other so soon. But that wasn’t what he had meant. I turned my head to look at him.

“Don’t you want to go?” he asked. “Wouldn’t you like to get out of this dead end neighborhood, out of Robledo.”

I nodded. “I was just thinking that. But—”

“I want you to marry me, and I want us to get out of here,” he said in a near whisper. “This place is dying.”

I raised myself to my elbows and looked down at him. The only light in the room came from a single window up near the ceiling. Nothing covered it any more, and the glass was broken out of it, but still, only a little light came in. Curtis’s face was full of shadows.

“Where do you want to go?” I asked him.

“Not Olivar,” he said. “That could turn out to be a bigger dead end than living here.”

“Where, then?”

“I don’t know. Oregon or Washington? Canada? Alaska?”

I don’t think I gave any sign of sudden excitement. People tell me my face doesn’t show them what I’m feeling. My sharing has been a hard teacher. But he saw something.

“You’ve already been thinking about leaving, haven’t you,” he demanded. “That’s why you won’t talk about getting married.”

I rested my hand on his smooth chest.

“You were thinking about going alone!” He grasped my wrist, seemed ready to push it away. Then he held on to it, kept it. “You were just going to walk away from here and leave me.”

I turned so that he couldn’t see my face because now I had a feeling my emotions were all too obvious: Confusion, fear, hope… Of course I had intended to go alone, and of course I hadn’t told anyone that I was leaving. And I had not decided yet how Dad’s disappearance would affect my going. That raised frightening questions. What are my responsibilities? What will happen to my brothers if I leave them to Cory? They’re her sons, and she’ll move the earth to take care of them, keep them fed and clothed and housed. But can she do it alone? How?

“I want to go,” I admitted, moving around, trying to be comfortable on the pallet of old sleepsacks that we had put down on the concrete floor. “I planned to go. Don’t tell anyone.”

“How can I if I go with you?”

I smiled, loving him. But…“Cory and my brothers are going to need help,” I said. “When my father was here, I planned to go next year when I’m eighteen. Now… I don’t know.”

“Where were you going?”

“North. Maybe as far as Canada. Maybe not.”

“Alone?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”
Why alone, he meant.

I shrugged. “I could get killed as soon as I leave here. I could starve. The cops could pick me up. Dogs could get me. I could catch a disease. Anything could happen to me; I’ve thought about it. I haven’t named half the bad possibilities.”

“That’s why you need help!”

“That’s why I couldn’t ask anyone else to walk away from food and shelter and as much safety as there is in our world. To just start walking north, and hope you wind up some place good. How could I ask that of you?”

“It’s not that bad. Farther north, we can get work.”

“Maybe. But people have been flooding north for years. Jobs are scarce up there, too. And statelines and borders are closed.”

“There’s nothing down there!”

“I know.”

“So how can you help Cory and your brothers?”

“I don’t know. We haven’t figured out what to do. So far, nothing I’ve thought of will work.”

“They’d have more of everything if you left.”

“Maybe. But, Curtis, how can I leave them? Could you walk away and leave your family, not knowing how they would manage to survive?”

“Sometimes I think so,” he said.

I ignored that. He didn’t get along very well with his brother Michael, but his family was probably the strongest unit in the neighborhood. Take on one of them and you’ve got to deal with them all. He would never walk away from them if they were in trouble.

“Marry me now,” he said. “We’ll stay here and help your family get on its feet. Then we’ll leave.”

“Not now,” I said. “I can’t see how anything is going to work out now. Everything’s too crazy.”

“And what? You think it’s going to get sane? It’s never been sane. You just have to go ahead and live, no matter what.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I kissed him. But I couldn’t distract him.

“I hate this room,” he said. “I hate hiding to be with you and I hate playing games.” He paused. “But I do love you. Damn! Sometimes I almost wish I didn’t.”

“Don’t wish that,” I said. He knew so little about me, and he thought he knew everything. I’d never told him about my sharing, for instance. I’ll have to before I marry him. If I don’t, when he finds out, he’ll know I didn’t trust him enough to be honest, with him. And not much is known about sharing. Suppose I pass it on to my kids?

Then there’s Earthseed. I’ll have to tell him about that. What will he think? That I’ve gone crazy? I can’t tell him. Not yet.

“We could live at your house,” he said. “My parents would help out with food. Maybe I could find some kind of job…”

“I want to marry you,” I said. I hesitated, and there was absolute silence. I couldn’t believe I’d heard myself say such a thing, but it was true. Maybe I was just feeling bereft. Keith, my father, the Garfields, Mrs. Quintanilla… People could disappear so easily. I wanted someone with me who cared about me, and who wouldn’t disappear. But my judgment wasn’t entirely gone.