by Lou Cadle
“We’ll talk about it at home. Let’s get there safe and sound first.”
No one from the group trailed them.
They made it to the car safely, and Joan moved again to the back seat. Sierra started the car and steered it around in a tight circle.
“How’d it go?” Joan said.
Kelly said, “Let’s talk about it at home. Our place. Joan, would you round up your kids and Curt? If they’re around, I want everyone there.”
“Including Zoe?” Sierra asked.
Kelly sighed. “I don’t see how we’ll be able to keep her away. She’s getting a little old to send to her room with a book. And she’s getting old enough to learn more about this kind of thing.”
“You haven’t been teaching her to shoot?” Sierra said.
“You know we’d discuss that with you first.”
“Good,” Sierra said. She was of two minds about it. Zoe was certainly old enough, at nine, to learn how to handle a weapon. But she did not want her daughter to go through what she had. In fact, Zoe had lived a surprisingly normal life, except for not being around other kids her own age for the past several years. The world might have fallen apart, but so far it had barely touched her child. Zoe lived in a bubble of safety and love. Sierra wanted to keep it that way forever.
“I’m so curious about them,” said Joan. “Did you learn much?”
“Not really,” Kelly said.
“I tried, but Kelly wanted me quiet,” Sierra said. “And I’m not blaming you, Kelly. You’re right.”
“It’s fine if we learn about them. I just don’t want them knowing about us is all.”
When Sierra pulled up to a stop in her driveway, Kelly and Joan went opposite ways, agreeing to meet at Kelly and Arch’s place in fifteen minutes. Emily stayed with her to unload the grain bags, and within minutes, her father joined them.
“There are people down there at the grain farm,” Sierra told him. “Squatters. We’re meeting at the Quinn house in a few minutes to talk about it.”
“Are they well armed?”
“No. Not that they showed, and they would have shown were it the case. It’s been ten years, Pilar. Most people are going to be down to primitive weapons or empty guns.”
They all hauled a burlap sack into the barn and dropped them on the floor. Her arms free now, Emily mimed swinging a baseball bat and shooting a rubber band.
“That’s right,” Sierra said. “They had a bat and slingshot and nothing more that we saw.” They went for another load. Later they’d flail and winnow, and then label the bags of grain with a date and haul them up to the loft where there were many mousetraps set. But right now, before she started in on the grain, they needed to talk about the squatters.
The three of them were a bit late to the meeting, held around a picnic table outside. Once upon a time, Kelly had put out baked goods for meetings like this. Today there was a small bowl of plums. Sierra didn’t take one.
“We need to go down and chase them out of there. Right now,” Arch was saying as they walked up. Everyone was there.
“I don’t know that they’ll do us any harm,” Joan said.
“Where’s Zoe?” Sierra asked Dev.
“With the rabbits, but I doubt that’ll last when she understands we’re all here,” he said.
“Your granddaughter would say to be nice to them,” Sierra said to Arch.
“She’s nine years old,” he shot back. He was clearly in a fighting mood.
Sierra only shrugged. She was not in a fighting mood. Seldom was anymore.
Kelly said, “If we let them stay, they’d either take our grain or tear it out to plant something else. I don’t know how we’d survive without that food.”
“Two and a half million calories per year,” Pilar said. “It’s a lot to lose.”
Kelly said, “That’s in a good year. A wet year. I doubt we’ll hit two million this year from the grain, unless we get a good monsoon season, and starting soon.”
Sierra knew the calculations as well as any of them. Survival was all about calories. Fewer than 4000 calories per week came from the grain per person. The hens got part of it, and part of the amaranth leaves as well. But losing 3500 calories per week of food would hurt. More than hurt.
Kelly said aloud what most of them must be thinking. “We are eating 1500 calories a day, unless the hunt is good, like now, with the javelina Curt got us.”
Curt, standing with his back against a tree, nodded in acknowledgement of the implied thanks.
“I don’t know if I still have it in me to do that,” Pilar said. “Give up those calories.”
The adults ate about a kilo of various vegetables per day, for about 270 calories. Four eggs each provided 280 calories, and in May and June, they often had six eggs each. Two potatoes per day were another 250 calories. Red meat or rabbit or culled cockerels or stewed hens that had moved beyond laying age, 200 calories. Fruit, not much. All she and Pilar grew were strawberries and blueberries, and without a lot of rain, the fruit yields were poor. The grain gave each of them 500 calories per day. Without that, she’d be eating 1,000 calories per day on bad days, which was not enough. 1,500 wasn’t enough, but they survived because they could still hunt and supplement their diet with wild game.
Curt said, “We’d have more competitors for game if they stayed.”
“Exactly,” Arch said. “So we don’t just lose the grain. Now we’re competing for game too? We have to drive them off.”
Pilar said, “I’d rather talk with them first. Maybe one of them has some skill we need.”
“We have skills enough,” said Arch. “We’ve made it alone for years now.”
It would have been much harder had they not traded with Wes’s group for the first years. Sierra didn’t bother to point it out, for they all knew that was true.
“I’d like it if one were a dentist,” Joan said. She’d been suffering from a toothache off and on all year.
“At least the kids’ teeth seem okay,” Kelly said, glancing automatically toward the rabbit hutch, where Zoe was.
Sierra’s teeth were fine too. Perhaps it was the lack of sugar and bread. They’d tried to entice bees into a hive back at the beginning but had no luck. They were too rare. They ate healthily, except for not eating enough. No one around the table had any extra fat on them.
“So let’s arm ourselves and go,” Arch said.
Dev spoke for the first time. “I would like to talk to them. Figure out who they are. Get news of the world, if they have any.”
“Doubtful,” Arch said.
Sierra said, “They’d know about where they came from. And I’m curious why they left there.”
“They didn’t say?” Dev asked her.
“No. I have a theory, but it’s more like a wild guess.” If someone had raped Janine and impregnated her, that might be a reason to leave.
“What do we know about them?” Dev asked. He was looking at his mom.
She ticked off points on her fingers. “They didn’t have firearms, or didn’t show any. All white except one woman, the pregnant woman. A family, it seems. We got five names. Janine, Becca, Gili. And two men.” She frowned, trying to remember.
Sierra supplied them. “Saul and Jacob.”
“Biblical names,” Kelly said. “That’s right.”
Joan said, “Not just biblical.”
“What do you mean?” Pilar asked.
“Jewish. Those are Hebrew names, Saul, Jacob, Rebecca. Not Janine though.”
“She’s the black woman,” Kelly said. “The pregnant one. You’re right, of course. Old Testament names. I should have noticed.”
“How pregnant is she?”
“Very,” said Kelly. “And not well. In fact, I want to go get my medical book right now. Be back in a second.” She rose and went inside the house.
Sierra explained what Kelly had found out from the woman about her spotting and being on her feet making it worse. “So if we drive them off, she’s going to have a
hard time of it. Her and all of them, if they need to haul her along on their wagon.”
“That’s harsh,” Joan said. “I don’t feel good about that. I mean, a pregnant woman, Arch.”
“You’ve all gotten soft,” Arch said. “They’re sitting on five hundred calories per day that you want for your own belly, and you aren’t ready to march down there and give them what-for?”
There was a long silence. Finally Sierra said, “I don’t know. I’m afraid I don’t have that in me anymore. I mean, how many people are still alive after all this time? Some died in battles over food. Some surely starved to death. Some froze to death or died of the heat. Disease must have taken many. I hope we’re to a point where we can share the land and get along.”
“I’m willing to share the Earth with them,” Arch said. “But not my own land!”
“It isn’t our land,” she said, but quietly, not wanting to escalate him.
“Don’t you care about your daughter?”
“Of course I do.” That did get a rise out of her.
“You want her fed, right?”
Sierra forced herself to not respond with more anger. She took a few deep breaths instead.
Joan said, “I’d like to talk with them.”
Arch said, “I’m not sure what there is to talk about. And once we talk, then we’ll feel like we owe them.”
“They might have something to teach us. And if I’m right about their religion, it’s possible I can appeal to them along those lines. I took quite a bit of Hebrew and courses on the Talmud in my d-Div. Lots of Levinas.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Arch said.
“I’m saying, maybe we have a religious basis to talk with them. It might be a way to connect.”
“I don’t want to connect anything!” Arch said. His face was growing red.
“Arch, honey,” Kelly said, coming back with her book. “Shush.”
Sierra saw Zoe coming across the yard. “Your granddaughter heard you.”
Everyone turned to see Zoe approach. It gave everyone a chance to settle down.
“Hi, honey,” Kelly said. “How are the rabbits?”
Zoe walked up to her dad’s chair and leaned into him. Dev put his arm around her and Sierra felt an unwelcome pang of jealousy. “Hey, kiddo,” she said to her daughter.
“Hey, Sierra,” Zoe said back. She was a polite child. But she didn’t move from her dad’s side.
Sierra didn’t want that to hurt. But it did. What would the people down the hill do to her daughter’s chances of survival? Zoe must have enough food. That wasn’t up for debate. But she didn’t want to go down there and shoot people. She tried to imagine putting a bullet into the center mass of the pregnant woman, Janine, and her mind balked at the thought. “Joan is a good choice for negotiator,” she said. “I’ll stay here with Zoe and the animals.”
Emily raised her hand to shoulder level and pointed to herself and nodded. She’d be staying back as well.
“Where is everybody going?” Zoe said. “I want to go.”
Dev said, “There might be trouble where we’re going. I want you home and safe. Your mom will watch over you.” He patted her on the hip. He did this thing that looked a little like how you’d pet a big dog, a thump-thump, rather than a caress. But Zoe didn’t mind it at all.
Sierra wanted to have that kind of closeness with her daughter. But she didn’t. She never had, and she never would. Usually, she accepted that. Today, the thought was depressing. Maybe it was seeing a pregnant woman that had done it, stirred some maternal instinct to life.
Arch said, “Well I’m going to go check—” He stopped himself. “Something in the shop,” he finished.
His stash of weapons, he meant.
“I’m not sure what to do,” Curt said.
“About what?” Zoe said.
Dev and his mother exchanged a glance. “We have a problem, and we’re trying to figure out how to solve it.”
“Tell me. I’m good at math. Aren’t I?” Zoe asked her grandmother, who functioned as her teacher most often.
“You are, but this isn’t just a math problem.”
“What kind of problem?”
“A food problem,” said Dev. “If we lost some of our food—say the rabbits all got sick and died—how would we make up that food?”
“Catch wild rabbits?” she said. “And put them in the hutches?”
“That’s an idea,” he said. “But I’m pretty sure wild rabbits wouldn’t like that.”
“I could make them like me,” Zoe said. “I’m nice.”
It really was a wonder how protected she was, Sierra thought. They’d all created that bubble of safety for her, and they were continuing to. “Maybe we should tell her,” she said.
Dev looked over. “I’m pretty sure I know her answer.”
Sierra nodded at him. “But give her a chance to say it. She’s getting to be grown up enough.”
“I love you, Zoe,” said Kelly, “but in this, I’m afraid you won’t be making the decision for us. We need to talk as a group and decide.”
“I’m part of the group,” Zoe said. “Aren’t I?”
“My point exactly,” Sierra said.
Dev looked less than happy about it, but he finally nodded. “Okay. Here’s what’s up. Some people want our grain farm. Without it, we’ll go hungry. What do you think we should do about it?”
“It’s ours,” Zoe said, frowning. “So they shouldn’t try and take it.”
“That’s right,” Dev said.
“So we tell them not to. We tell them it’s wrong.”
“That sounds like a good plan,” Dev said. “But what if they say they will anyway?”
“Then yell like Grandpa does?”
Kelly smiled. “That’s a pretty good idea. I’m sure your grandpa will approve.”
Zoe looked at Pilar. “Not you, Pilar. My other grandpa.”
“I knew who you meant.”
“You don’t yell,” Zoe said.
Sierra waited to see if the conversation would return to normal, or if Zoe’s presence would make everyone hold back. It was one thing to explain to her in simple terms what the problem was. It was quite another to speak of shooting people dead, and that’s where a confrontation might well lead.
“I’m cold,” Kelly said. “Could you run in and get me my sweater, Zoe? It’s on the back of the chair in my bedroom.”
“Okay,” Zoe said and skipped off.
There was no way Kelly could be cold. It had to be over a hundred degrees still. “That won’t work for long,” Sierra said.
“If you aren’t coming, why don’t you take Zoe over to your house and have her help you with something now. The grain. Or the garden. The hens.”
“Good idea,” Rod said, the first thing he’d said yet. “I mean, no offense, Sierra, but if you aren’t coming, do you really care what our detailed plans are?”
“I guess not,” she said. “Misha, you haven’t said anything yet. And Curt, you’ve barely spoken.”
“After Zoe is gone,” Curt said. “I’ll go get Arch out here again when she is.”
When Zoe came back with the sweater, Kelly did drape it over her shoulders, taking the ruse a bit far.
Sierra said, “Hey, Zoe, I need to get going with hanging the grain to finish drying. I’d like your help.”
“What about those people?”
“We’ll figure something out,” Dev said. “Go on with your mom and help her.”
“What if you need us, Dad?”
“We’ll come get you if we do,” Dev said. “Go on, now. I’d love some of your grandma’s plum jelly on bread this week, and I can’t have that without the bread part.”
Zoe’s face suggested she wasn’t entirely buying her dismissal, but she seemed unable to come up with another argument that would allow her to stay. She said, “Okay,” and she walked over to Sierra.
“Ready?” Sierra said.
“Yeah,” Zoe said, but sh
e wasn’t enthusiastic. Well, why should she be?
“I’ll let you collect the eggs if you want.”
That seemed to cheer her up a bit. “Okay.”
“See y’all later,” Sierra said. She walked away with her daughter, aware of how much more distance Zoe kept between them than she kept from her father when they walked together.
It hurt. But she couldn’t really blame Zoe.
Chapter 4
Dev watched his daughter walk away with Sierra, and then his eyes lingered on Sierra’s hips and thighs. He still wanted her. But it was too easy for him to fall in love with her again when they made love. He’d done it more than once over the years. The bittersweet feeling that pierced him when he thought of those times was about the least complicated thing he felt for her. Some days, it was a darker and more twisted bundle of emotions that boiled up in him.
“She’ll be fine,” his mother said.
He turned back, realizing after a confusing second his mother meant Zoe. “I know. I trust Sierra.”
His father was walking up as she said that and made a noise, still frustrated that Sierra had become a pacifist at some point, rather than the enthusiastic warrior she’d been. He could remember the day ten years ago Sierra had brought back one of his father’s books on war, thanked him for the loan, and refused another book his father pressed on her. “I’m done. I hope we’re all done killing.”
As always, Arch’s response to things he didn’t understand was to become angry, and he had cursed Sierra after she had left that day, and Pilar, for raising her to be such a weakling.
But Sierra wasn’t weak. Not at all. And he did trust her when it came to Zoe. She loved her daughter. That much, he was sure of.
He dragged his attention back to the matter at hand. “What are we going to do?”
“Run them out,” Arch said.
“Talk to them,” Joan said.
And though the debate went on for another twenty-five minutes, those were the two sides. Finally, they reached a compromise. They’d go armed, and in force, but they’d let Joan take the lead in talking to the strangers first. His mom had convinced his dad by looking up from her medical book and saying, “If we drive them off first, or kill them, we won’t get a chance to talk. So at least let’s do it in the right order. They might know something we’ll need to know to defend ourselves.”