by Max Brooks
I didn’t actually do these first two parts. That’s why she’d measured me. A pre-cut stalk would save time. That was the only part of the lesson she did herself. The rest was hands-on for me.
Like the shaft, choosing the knife takes careful consideration. You can’t just use the longest blade. Those tend to be too thin. The best option is the shorter, eight-inch “chef” type, which also needs to be the right design.
One solid piece, the steel going all the way down through the handle. Otherwise, you can’t attach it to the shaft. And attaching is the trickiest part. If the knife’s grip is held in place by pins, you’re in business. Pins mean holes in the steel. And those holes are the best way to tie them on, but I’ll explain that part in a minute.
Hopefully the grip itself is made of resin. That way you can smash it out with a rock. (I know…not one hammer in the whole village!) Be safe while smashing, those fragments can hit you in the eye. While wearing Mostar’s onion goggles, I felt little chips peppering my face.
Once the grip and the pins are removed, the next step is fitting. Slide the handle into the hollow top of the shaft. If it doesn’t fit (good strong bamboo might not have enough internal room), you’ve got to saw out a little groove with the bread knife. Once your naked blade fits snugly, take it right back out for measuring.
That’s where the handle holes come in. Place those holes against the outside of the shaft, mark them with a pen (Sharpie, if you got one), then do it again on the other side. See where I’m going with this? You bore those holes out with a paring knife. Take your time. Don’t rush. Mostar showed me where she chipped off the edge of a couple of paring knives, ruining them forever. Checking for light shows if they all line up. I got it right the first time, and Mostar seemed impressed. Apparently, that’s the easiest way to screw up, not matching the holes, and the more you drill, the more you weaken the bamboo.
Next, you sew the knife in, and that’s what the wire’s for. Mostar used a five-foot section of electrical cord from a floor lamp. After cutting the cord free (a regular scissors will do), pull the two sections apart (if it’s that kind). Set the extra section aside for another spear, and start threading the wire through the top hole. Sounds simple enough, but my first few tries only produced frustration. The tip kept getting stuck because I’d impatiently skipped a step. Shaving down the wire’s end rubber to a point turns it into a needle, which makes a world of difference!
Once the wire exits the second top hole, pull it through nearly to the end and tie the last inch or so into a secure knot. Then wrap the cord tightly round and round the bamboo until you get to the two bottom holes. Then thread it through, tie it off, and you’re done!
A real spear!
Mostar took the weapon from me, held it in her hands, checking the balance, squinted with one eye at the knotted wire, then handed it back. “Well done, Katie.” It was the first time she smiled all day.
I felt so proud. For a minute, I just handled my creation—vertical, horizontal. I even gave a short thrusting motion with both hands and accidentally banged the back end into the garage door.
“Sorry.” I felt my cheeks redden at the dent.
Mostar waved it away with, “Forget it.” Then, “I knew you’d be a natural at this. You have a logical, methodical mind. Much more than me.” She gestured to the aborted prototypes. “This is how it works. Try, fail, learn, then pass on eventual success for improvement.”
That sparked my own idea for an improvement. “What about melting the rubber? Won’t it hold the blade even more securely?”
“It might”—Mostar gave me that nod an encouraging teacher gives a well-meaning but totally wrong first-grader—“but it would ruin the wire, which we might need to make more spears.”
She gestured to a collection of shorter, thinner shafts. “That’s what worries me about the javelins. Losing a good knife every time we throw one. Although I guess they’ll just slide right out if I don’t figure out a way to make barbs.”
Another idea stirred, but this one was far more nebulous. I looked at the 3-D printer but couldn’t manage a cohesive thought. Instead, I ended up yawning, which gave me a sympathy yawn from Mostar.
“You need to sleep”—she glanced up at the wall clock—“when you take over watching Reinhardt. I don’t think he’s woken up yet. You’ll rest then. And eat.”
Eat.
I suddenly felt sick to my stomach. I’d been so wrapped up in making the spear, so engrossed in the step-by-step process. But with some of my focus freed…
I must have glanced over to the door, the kitchen, Vincent’s head in the freezer.
“We’ll bury him later.” Mostar, the mind reader. “When we’re safe, when we have time.”
I felt my head swim, lurching for the table.
“Take a breath.” Mostar took my spear, guiding me to the workbench’s little stool. “Try to relax.”
I did, closing my eyes tightly. I felt the dam bursting in my brain.
To be someone else’s food.
You’re a person. You think, you feel. And then it’s all gone, and what used to be you is now a mushy mess in something else’s stomach.
Carnage, blood, smiling yellow fangs. Gnawing flesh. Licking bones.
“Look at me.” The hand on my chin, forcing me to open my eyes.
“I know.” Mostar’s sad smile, the sigh. “It’s a blessing and a curse, the human mind. We’re the only creatures on Earth that can imagine our own death. But”—she held up my spear—“we can also imagine ways to prevent it.”
That was when the doorbell rang.
Palomino stood in the entry, holding a rolled-up yoga mat. “What are you doing here, Little Doll?” Mostar grabbed her and pulled her inside. “You know you’re not supposed to be outside all alone. Do your parents know where you are?”
She shook her head, then pointed, with the mat, to something outside.
Then I got it. The mat was to keep her knees clear of dirt. “Hey, Pal, I’m sorry I don’t have time to garden with you right now. I’ve got to get over to Mr. Reinhardt to…”
Wrong. Pal shook her head at me, then shifted back to Mostar with a second gesture to…what?
I looked but couldn’t see anything. Not a specific house, not the volcano, and (thank God!) no dark forms staring down from the trees.
She was facing southeast, and, to my knowledge, there was nothing in that direction. Again, Mostar seemed perplexed. “I’m sorry, I don’t…”
Then, “Oh,” followed by a quick glance back at her wall clock. “Ohhhhh!” This big, broad smile broke her mouth wide open and I’m pretty sure the corners of her eyes began to sparkle.
“Oh, Lutko Moja, it’s been a long time.” Mostar pinched the bridge of her nose, used it to shake her head, then looked up with a shrugging, “C’mon, let’s see if I remember.”
Ignoring my confusion, Mostar put an arm around the girl, and asked me, “Would you mind running upstairs to fetch a clean towel from the hall closet?”
It was my first time upstairs. I didn’t intend to snoop.
But her house is laid out pretty much like ours. The hall closet is right next to the master bedroom. I didn’t go in. The door was open. And the picture was so big, facing the bed, which you couldn’t miss from my position in the hall.
Mostar looked a lot younger, maybe twenties or thirties. She wasn’t thin, but her hourglass figure stood out in her belted coat. Her hair glistened, raven black under a knit wool cap. The man with his arm around her, he looked about the same age. Goatee. Glasses. The kind of Euro intellectual you always see in movies, the kind of guy I thought I’d marry when I was in high school. They both had their arms around the kids standing in front of them.
Boy and girl. The boy looked about twelve, the girl maybe ten. Big grins, genuine on the boy, silly mu
gging on the girl.
They were standing on the rocky bank of a frozen river. A bridge rose up behind them. Narrow, no cars. An old stone arch connecting two sides of an equally old stone town. I didn’t recognize the bridge at first, but then it hit me that I was looking at the real version of her glass sculpture!
I couldn’t tell where. Maybe Russia. I’ve only seen pictures of Red Square. I’m also pretty sure it wasn’t Northwest Europe either. The buildings and the clothes seemed too drab, if that’s the right word. Eastern Europe? Poland? Czech Republic—or, if I remember high school history, back then it would have been Czechoslovakia? What’s the southeast called? The part before you get to Turkey. Sounds like Baltics. Balkans.
Yugoslavia, another country I’d read about in school. A war in the ’90s? I would have been about those kids’ age. I didn’t exactly follow current events back then. The ’90s were O.J. and Britney.
Even at Penn, I only took intro to poli-sci and all I remember is the term “ethnic cleansing.” And Professor Tongun, from Sudan, “Like a tree in the forest, America doesn’t hear foreign suffering.”
Shelling. Snipers. Siege fries. Mostar.
“Katie!” from downstairs. “We’re waiting.”
I grabbed the biggest bath towel she had, ran downstairs, and found them in the kitchen. Mostar looked up at me, smirking. She has to know that I saw the picture. All she said was, “Perfect timing.”
They must have just finished washing their hands, and, I think, their feet as well. I could see moisture glistening between their toes. I thought Mostar was going to use the towel to dry them off but when she took it from me, the two of them headed into the living room.
“You can watch,” she said over her shoulder, “I don’t think He’ll mind. Or She. What do I know?” She gave a slight shrug, chuckled, then spread the towel on the floor next to Pal’s yoga mat. They were at an angle from the living room window, facing in the direction Pal had motioned to earlier.
They both stood ramrod straight, placed their hands up a little past their shoulders, palms out, as Mostar chanted, “Allahuackbar.”
I won’t try to describe in detail what I witnessed. I know I’d just mess it up. I want to be respectful, although I’m sure neither Mostar nor Pal would mind. The beauty of their prayer, the fluid, ballet motions. Raised arms, turned heads. Knees bending and rising to Mostar’s sung phrases. And then the name, through a cracking voice:
“Vincent Earnest Boothe.”
It is from the farming class that the bravest men and the sturdiest soldiers come….
—MARCUS PORCIUS CATO
JOURNAL ENTRY #14 [CONT.]
Leaving Mostar’s house, I turned left instead of right. I wasn’t supposed to be at Reinhardt’s for another few minutes and I wanted to spend that time in the garden. Not that there’d be much to do. I figured I’d turn on the drip line, maybe shower and change while it ran.
I opened the front door, then the garage door, and gasped.
SPROUTS!
A tiny little arch was poking up near my feet, right at the spot where I’d planted the first large white bean!
“Pal!” I called, then sticking my head out the front door, shouted, “Palomino! The garden is sprouting!”
I bent down to examine the little, upside-down u. It was whitish, about half an inch high, and as I peered closer, I could see that tip of the bean below one end.
The spot next to this arch looked like it was bulging a little, so, using Bobbi’s teapot, I dripped a few drops on it. Sure enough, as the dirt fell away, the first hint of an arch as well. I tried it again with the next one, and the one after that. So many u’s struggling to free themselves from the soil.
And they weren’t the only ones!
The entire garden! Every inch!
“OhmyGod!” That was Carmen, who’d just come in with Pal. “Did you plant all those?”
“Just these,” I said, referring to the marked beans. Ironically, nothing was coming up where I’d planted the Chinese peas and sweet potatoes. Or maybe they just weren’t coming up yet! And it really didn’t matter because their seed beds were surrounded by mysterious little shoots. They were everywhere, those shoots, scattered randomly across the entire garden.
“What are they all?” asked Carmen as Pal examined them on hands and knees.
“No idea,” I said. “I don’t even know where they’re coming from.”
“Maybe the earth we brought in?” That was Mostar, who’d just joined us.
“Maybe,” I said with a little disappointment. If they were all just wild weeds…
“Compost?” That was Dan. This was turning into a real party. “The compost we mixed in, the older stuff at the bottom of the bins that turned into soil…could there still be old seeds from…”
“Cucumber slices,” mused Mostar, who squatted next to Pal. Together they were examining a little wild sprout with round green leaves. “And tomatoes?” She pointed to a three-inch thread with two tiny narrow leaves. “This one, I think. How many times do we cut off the bruised parts?”
“I do that all the time!” said Carmen, with more energy and excitement than I’d ever seen. “The extra slices of something, or cutting out pits. And salsa!” This was directed down to Pal. “When we have taco night! All the leftover salsa we make! Right in the bin!”
Our own tomatoes! Even now I can’t stop thinking how good they might taste.
Mostar looked at Pal, who was gently brushing her fingertips across the wobbling tomato stalk. “You know, we still have a lot of older soil-type compost. That has to have more seeds.”
“And rice.” I pointed to the little square foot where I’d sprinkled Bobbi’s brown rice. It was now a solid patch of grass.
“Rice!” Mostar beamed at me. I explained where I’d gotten it and how much more I thought Bobbi had left. Mostar’s lips rounded into a tight O. “We can live on that, rice and beans.” She looked at Carmen. “Do you have any more of those beanbags lying around?”
“We might.” Carmen looked at Pal. “And maybe some extra loose beans we didn’t use. Maybe in the arts and crafts chest?”
Pal nodded enthusiastically.
“Then that would be worth it…” Mostar nodded back. “Worth the calories to build more gardens.”
“More gardens!” Dan almost hit the ceiling. “Totally! Another garage! Maybe two, drip lines, compost”—he glanced at Palomino—“more worms and shit!”
“And shit?” Mostar asked with cocked eyebrow. Dan laughed, his cheeks reddened.
“Yes, really—the biodigester tanks!” And to me, with outstretched palms, “C’mon, I won’t get cut, or sick. I promise!”
Before I could answer, Carmen asked me, “Can we do it?”
I wasn’t sure if she was asking for my permission or expertise. Not that I had either to give. But Dan, Carmen, Palomino, the way they were all looking at me. And Mostar, hanging back, crossed arms. Judging my call?
My mind had already been racing through calculations, judging if the math added up. One cup of brown rice was around two hundred calories. One cup of beans, depending on type, might be the same or more. And fattening too! Most beans had fat in them, about a gram per cup. But how many cups of beans and rice could we hope for?
“We can,” I started to say, but held out my hands quickly, “but after…after we finish the perimeter. First things first, right? Safety, then food. Soon as we get the stakes up, soon as we know they work, we’ll focus on more gardens.”
“Yeah!” Dan pumped his fist as Carmen hugged her daughter.
Behind them, Mostar smiled and nodded.
I felt ten feet tall.
Then she jerked her head to the door and tapped her wrist like an old-style wristwatch.
Reinhardt! My shift!
&nb
sp; I ran over to Reinhardt’s house and saw through the window that Effie was reading in the chair next to his couch. She saw me, smiled, and got up to join me in the foyer. I could see Reinhardt was sleeping and she said that he’d been out for most of the morning.
I tried to apologize for being late and described what had happened in the garden. She brightened, but not for the reason you’d think. “Thank you,” she said, “thank you for all you’re doing with Palomino. She needs the purpose now, routine.” She looked across the circle to her house, where her wife and daughter were waving from the window. “And now”—her eyes scanned the ridge—“she needs to focus on something positive. We all do.” More waves from her family, and a final “thank you,” before heading home.
So many thoughts were racing through my head. How many gardens can we build? And what about this one? What now? How much warmth do those little plants need? Dan had been right about cleaning off the roof. We’d need every kilowatt to keep the garage at summer temperatures. And what about summer light? Happy lamps? Everyone has one. Enough? At least the walls are white. Reflective. Aluminum foil? That hydroponics store in Venice. A plant in a reflective box? And fertilizer. Can we really use our own poo? Safe for Dan? Worth it? Smelling up the house?
So many questions, sitting here writing all this down. Foggy brain. Should nap. Reinhardt’s still out. But his library. So many books. Gotta be something useful.
JOURNAL ENTRY #14 [CONT.]
Nope. There wasn’t. Not one practical text, and believe me, I looked! Lots of philosophers though. Descartes, Voltaire, Sartre, and shelves of historians like Gibbon, Keegan, and Tacitus. Beautiful novels too, leather-bound first editions with gold printed names like Proust, Zola, and Molière.
And, of course, there’re his books. Halfway to Marx, Walking with Xu Xing, and the famous Rousseau’s Children, in at least a dozen languages: French, Italian, Greek, Chinese. (Or Japanese, I can’t tell. Can’t be Korean because I didn’t see those little circles.) I noticed a lot of Rousseau’s works were intermixed with various volumes of his book, as if they were buddies who got published at the same time.