by Alyson Miers
Kenny was now distracted from watching the forest floor and had by that point turned a lovely shade of maroon with the effort of not laughing out loud. "Okay," he squeaked, "what about the rest of Jesus' life?"
"Ah, yes," Charlinder continued. "It was a very creative load of malarkey, and not even Mary could have predicted how well it would go over, but she has to keep the lie up to keep herself out of trouble. So she and Joseph tell little Jesus he's the son of God, or else he might ask some really awkward questions about why he looks nothing like this guy he calls Dad. And Jesus is a cool kid. He's a nice boy, and a smart boy, but he's also a little wacky as his mom did hallucinogens while she was pregnant, so he grows up thinking he can make all sorts of crazy shit happen. He gets together this minion squad called the Disciples, and they help him go around and make himself notoriously perverse and contrarian. If he can't be famous, he'll just have to be infamous. And underneath the insanity, he does have some pretty gutsy things to say, so he starts building up some followers, until he's thirty-three, when he finally annoys the Romans so much they nail him to a cross and leave him to die of blood loss and septic shock. Or at least he looks like they killed him, wakes up in the tomb a few days later, and comes out to find this hot chick Mary Magdalene, who's very happy to see him with a pulse, and there was much rejoicing in the land. So he keeps carrying on a little while longer, until he 'ascended to Heaven,' which probably means he snorted up some hallucinogen and hopped off a cliff, but all's well, because the minions, I mean the Disciples, now called the Apostles, are still around spreadin' The Word," he finished.
Kenny had now resorted to snorting like a piglet to control his laughter. "I'm so glad we're not with Brucie!" he snickered.
"He'd be trying to kill me right now," Charlinder agreed.
"What would you say about the miracles?" asked Kenny. "I remember hearing something about some fish and loaves, and there was a leper getting cured, too."
Charlinder made a noncommittal sort of noise and corresponding shrug. "Exaggeration. The Bible was edited by people, even if they like to think it was written by God."
Kenny grinned. "If Bruce and all of them are right, and there is a God, you're going to Hell."
Charlinder scoffed. “Whatever, I’ll see you there.”
After they kept quiet long enough, they saw a young buck big enough to be worth shooting. They both took aim but missed.
They waited. The difference between "waiting" and "doing nothing" was that when you did nothing, you were relaxed. Hunting involved a lot of waiting, by definition. The primary difference between Charlinder's and Kenny's waiting was that Kenny might have been waiting for another deer to show up, while Charlinder was waiting to see that it didn’t.
"You didn't bring me out here for my good aim," whispered Charlinder. Kenny looked back at him. "And you weren't looking to hear my theory of the so-called Immaculate Conception, either."
"It's a pretty good story."
"Still, though. What was it you wanted to ask me, that you couldn't in the village?"
Kenny looked back at the forest floor. "I don't really know. Maybe I should be asking someone older, like your uncle, or Miriam. Or my mom, for that matter."
"But I'm here, since you dragged me out when I could have been sleeping, so...what’s going on?”
“Might as well," admitted Kenny. "Do you notice that the Faithful are getting..." he searched for the right word, "tougher? Now? Than they used to be?"
"Tougher. Sure. What have you seen from them?"
"Like Robert showing up at the school asking to lecture the kids."
"Who told you about that?"
"Robert told me. He was all annoyed about it, too, like you wouldn't give him a chance to say what he had to say or something."
Charlinder snorted. "Yeah, right. It's his problem if he can't get the kids to listen to him on their own time, he’s not preaching to them on mine.”
"And did you notice they're doing the Sermons twice a week now?"
This much was a surprise to Charlinder. "No, when did that start happening?"
"Just a couple weeks ago, and they keep trying to do the Sermon in different places, too."
"So they can get more people to listen. How's that going over with the neighbors?"
"Not bad enough to stop them. It's got the grown-ups annoyed, but it's also got some more kids asking them questions."
"Which is exactly what Robert wants," Charlinder muttered. "Good for them."
"Right, so they're getting kind of demanding now. Do you remember them ever getting like this before?"
"Not really," said Charlinder, and thought about it for a moment. "You're right, we should ask someone older. Maybe they've gotten like this before and then let it drop."
"I hope so, because I’ve had it up to my ears of Bruce being such a jackass to me."
"How is Bruce being a jackass?"
"He keeps telling me some compost about how casual sex gets God all pissed off, and I should pray to God that my sins are forgiven, and just getting really rude every time I go near Yolande or Stuart. I think he just doesn't want me doing sex with his sister."
Charlinder pictured Bruce being rude to Kenny, then pictured Yolande snapping at him while nursing Stuart. "There are other women in our village, you know."
"But I like Yolande."
"Does she like you back?"
"Oh shit yeah."
"Really."
"I know she seems pissy most of the time, but once you get her in the mood..." Kenny sat up on his knees and thrust his pelvis at the air, then waggled his eyebrows at Charlinder. It was one of the last things he’d wanted to hear in that setting.
"That's great, Kenny."
"She's awesome."
The five of them managed to take a felled buck to the village that day. Kenny landed an impressive shot on one that came in lured by the scent of a doe which he had wisely declined to shoot. Bruce’s group helped them track him down until he collapsed from the arrow wound. Charlinder volunteered to help strip the carcass to dry the meat for pemmican, as he figured that would get him a chance to talk alone with an old woman. However, as the woman who turned up to help with the deer was Eleanor, he thought it best not to ask her about the history of the Faithful's activities in their village. All he told her, when she asked about the hunt, was how Kenny had shot the buck.
Every day after the children left, Charlinder found himself staring at the map of the world mounted on the schoolroom wall. This new habit made no sense to him; the map had stayed in that spot since someone had helped Eileen Woodlawn etch it into a sheet of clay over a hundred years before. He knew every river, mountain range and coastline so well he could close his eyes, let someone place his finger on a random spot, and name the country with near-perfect accuracy. There was no reason why that sheet of baked clay should interest him so much now. Still he was drawn to it every afternoon, gazing at the layout of the continents until the rumbling in his stomach told him to go to the meeting square for lunch. Eventually, he realized that he was always interested in the northern hemisphere, and the vast expanses of land that stretched across the higher latitudes. He was mesmerized at how North America and Asia created a nearly uninterrupted swath of land from east to west over the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Most of the Earth's surface was water, as he taught his students, and yet, he now observed, if you just stayed far enough north, going from eastern Canada to the westernmost bounds of continental Europe, there was just so much land. People in his era couldn't travel much by water. They built small boats that could handle rivers, but even a river as wide as the Paleola was a thread compared to the broadcloth of the Atlantic Ocean. He could only dream of how people in the pre-Plague era had used airplanes that would carry them over any span of the Earth in a matter of hours, or how they could build enormous boats that sailed across oceans. Now, looking at how much of those higher latitudes was covered in solid ground, mostly Canada and Russia, he marveled at how far one could travel around th
e world by land. You wouldn't need to be in possession of a large boat to do that. Only a lot of time.
But why did he suddenly care enough to see this?
Chapter Five
Children
Charlinder's place in the labor scheme was beyond categorization, as he was the schoolteacher. His position and that of the village medic lay outside the usual divisions. Since he was busy with preparing and giving lessons, making paper and ink for the children to use, and synthesizing older works into new teaching materials, he was not expected to play a regular role in the agricultural work that other Paleolans performed, except for when harvest time came.
The council was open to anyone whose neighbors would nominate them, and it was generally agreed that serving on the village's administrative committee was a responsibility in addition to, not instead of, one's daily and seasonal chores. Therefore, it caused Miriam no end of annoyance when her fellow council members acted as though making a few decisions from the council table was all the work they needed to do. It was an annoyance that she decided to vent one day to Charlinder while they took a part of the sheep flock out to graze.
"...and if it were just the old guys with arthritis in their hands, that would make sense, but it's all of them that do it, so there's no excuse," she ranted while her hand-spindle lowered to her ankles.
"Maybe we're just in such good shape, they figure there's not much that needs to be done," suggested Charlinder, who was busy feeding a milking ewe some clover blossoms from his hand.
"I'm sure that's what they want to tell themselves," she said exasperatedly, "but even if we don't have any shortages, there's always something that could be improved."
"Like what?" asked Charlinder. He was interested in hearing what Miriam would come up with on this.
"Like, even if we have enough food to get us through the winter, there would be nothing wrong with having more than enough," she offered. "Or they could start thinking about ways to make the cabins warmer in cold weather, so we don't have to shiver for three months."
Something about these suggestions was bothering him. They brought to mind something he hadn't given any thought in some time.
"Miriam," he interrupted, "not too long ago you said something about 'Heaven forbid a guy should do anything productive around here.' Do you really think that? Do you think Benjamin,” he referred to her brother, “doesn’t do any real work?”
“Oh, pfft. Benjamin has a sense of humor, he knows what I mean.”
“I’m sure you mean that old rhyme of ‘Man works from sun to sun, but woman’s work is never done.’ Is that what you’re getting at?”
“Yeah, actually, it is pretty galling to spend all day hunched over a set of knitting needles and then find out a few young punks were so bored they thought it would be funny to mix up the weaving supplies as a joke. If you’re pulling pranks to fill up your spare time, you’re doing something wrong.”
“That happens maybe a handful of times a year, so do you think anyone who isn’t in the Never Done department isn’t being productive? Really?”
"Of course I don't mean you," she said. "You're always helpful."
"With my spinning and weaving, sure, but what about my teaching?"
Miriam seemed to deflate with the breath she exhaled. She started walking to the other end of the field to hold the sheep in. When she turned in his direction again, she found Charlinder still watching her, waiting for an answer.
"Nobody says they don't want you to teach," she called out from her spot some distance away. "They just wonder if it's necessary for you to teach all the children all those things you talk about in that school."
"So, what, I should teach some more than others? Or, should I just stop teaching some of them anything at all?"
"Char, calm down. I'm sure they could all stand to learn something from you."
"So what's the problem with teaching everything to all of them?" Charlinder demanded, walking up closer to Miriam's new spot.
"For example," she answered. "My grandson keeps asking me why he needs to learn to read and write, and I don't know what to tell him."
Charlinder was dumbfounded at this. "Miriam, you use written records at every council meeting."
"Most people are never going to be on the village council. How am I supposed to justify them going to school to learn something they'll never use anywhere else? Because for everyone who's not on the council, there's nothing to read or write about, just like they don't need to know history after they finish school."
"But even if it's just for council meetings, you never know which of those kids will be on the council until they grow up, and they should be chosen for their ability to govern, not based on which ones learned to read as children."
"Of course that's true, but I don't care to see a whole generation of children grow up thinking they don't have to labor because they can make administration their life's work."
"None of the kids in my classes are growing up to think that," Charlinder protested. "They don't think any such thing."
"They think you're teaching them something they only need to know so they can do their homework," Miriam corrected him. "And then they'll never use it when they grow up, because they certainly don't see their parents using it."
"The written word is a necessary tool for any civilization," Charlinder argued. "So if we're ever going to become a civilization again, we need to maintain it."
"I know we need to maintain the written word. But if most of us won't have any use for it until a few hundred years from now, then these kids can't imagine what's the reason for them to learn it now, and I'm sorry, Char, but if you must ask for my opinion, I can't see how giving them all the same pre-Plague knowledge is doing anything productive."
So he had his answer. Miriam, a chosen village leader and the person whose opinion he respected above all others except for his uncle's, thought that his job, the central feature of his life, was largely unnecessary for the good of the community. She, too, thought that all life was in the here and now, and anything that gave attention to the past was superfluous, to the future was frivolous, and to other parts of the world was incomprehensible. There was so much wrong with what she was saying to him, and with what she was saying, apparently, to the rest of the village, even if only in what she didn't tell them. She was far too intelligent to be so complacent. He knew enough history to see that when passion was on one side and apathy was on the other, passion tended to win, no matter how wrong-headed its position. Charlinder knew that Miriam was one of the people who understood; though he hated to think of himself as being on a “side,” he could see lines being drawn in the sand and she was on a side with him. But that didn’t mean anything if this was how little she cared.
Whether his students' parents appreciated the value of it or not, Charlinder continued to teach as usual. It wasn't long before he decided to give a history lesson on something much older and more persistent than the Plague. This was bigotry, and the millennia-old violence it wrought.
"...so before the war ended in 1945, somewhere between twelve and thirteen million people died in the concentration camps under Adolf Hitler's regime, and this death toll was always known as the Holocaust," he explained to his class.
A small hand went up from one of his younger students. Charlinder motioned for the little girl to speak. "How much is twelve or thirteen million?"
A titter went around through his older students, but Charlinder etched a number, 12,000,000, in the sheet of damp clay at his feet that he maintained for the schoolroom. "You know how many is ten, right? Ten times ten is a hundred," he explained, pointing at the last two zeros on the clay, "and that much times ten is a thousand. That times ten is ten-thousand, times ten again is a hundred-thousand, times ten again is a million. Twelve or thirteen of that big number is about how many people died in the Holocaust, so you can see that his idea of the Final Solution made some very, very bad things happen.”