I dug a dried apricot out of my pack and held it out to him. He couldn’t have been more than six, but he wouldn’t touch the food until the man told him to.
Good discipline. But at the man’s nod, he snatched the apricot, bit off a tiny taste, then stuffed the rest into his mouth whole.
So, in company with five strangers, I plundered my family’s home. The ammunition under the closet floor in my parents’ room had burned, had no doubt exploded. The closet was badly charred. So much for the money hidden there.
I took dental floss, soap, and a jar of petroleum jelly from my parents’ bathroom. Everything else was already gone.
I managed to gather one set of outer clothing each for Cory and my brothers. In particular, I found shoes for them. There was a woman scavenging among Marcus’s shoes, and she glared at me, but she kept quiet. My brothers had run out of the house in their pajamas. Cory had thrown on a coat. I had been the last to get out of the house because I had risked stopping to grab jeans, a sweatshirt, and shoes as well as my emergency pack. I could have been killed. If I had thought about what I was doing, if I had had to think, no doubt I would have been killed. I reacted the way I had trained myself to react-though my training was far from up to date— more memory than anything else. I hadn’t practiced late at night for ages, Yet my self-administered training had worked.
Now, if I could get these clothes to Cory and my brothers, I might be able to make up for their lack of training. Especially if I could get the money under the rocks by the lemon tree.
I put clothes and shoes into a salvaged pillow case, looked around for blankets, and couldn’t find a one.
They must have been grabbed early. All the more reason to get the lemon-tree money.
I went out to the peach tree, and, being tall, managed to reach a couple of nearly-ripe peaches that other scavengers had missed. Then I looked around as though for something more to take, and surprised myself by almost crying at the sight of Cory’s big, well-tended back garden, trampled into the ground. Peppers, tomatoes, squashes, carrots, cucumbers, lettuce, melons, sunflowers, beans, corn… . Much of it wasn’t ripe yet, but what hadn’t been stolen had been destroyed.
I scavenged a few carrots, a couple of handfuls of sunflower seeds from flower heads that lay on the ground, and a few bean pods from vines Cory had planted to run up the sunflower stalks and corn plants. I took what was left the way I thought a late-arriving scavenger would. And I worked my way toward the lemon tree. When I reached it, heavy with little green lemons, I hunted for any with even a hint of paling, of yellow. I took a few from the tree, and from the ground. Cory had planted shade-loving flowers at the base of the tree, and they had thrived there. She and my father had scattered small, rounded boulders among these in a way that seemed no more than decorative. A few of these had been turned over, crushing the flowers near them. In fact, the rock with the money under it had been turned over. But not the two or three inches of dirt over the money packet, triple wrapped and heat-sealed in plastic.
I snatched the packet in no more time than it had taken to pick up a couple of lemons a moment before. First I spotted the hiding place, then I snatched up the money packet along with a hand full of dirt. Then, eager to leave, but terrified of drawing attention to myself, I picked up a few more lemons and hunted around for more food.
The figs were hard and green instead of purple, and the persimmons were yellow-green instead of orange. I found a single ear of corn left on a downed stalk and used it to stuff the money packet deeper into my blanket pack. Then I left.
With my pack on my back and the pillow case in my left arm, resting on my hip like a baby, I walked down the driveway to the street. I kept my right hand free for the gun still in my pocket. I had not taken time to put on the holster.
There were more people within the walls than there had been when I arrived. I had to walk past most of them to get out. Others were leaving with their loads, and I tried to follow them without quite attaching myself to any particular group. This meant that I moved more slowly than I would have chosen to. I had time to look at the corpses and see what I didn’t want to see.
Richard Moss, stark naked, lying in a pool of his own blood. His house, closer to the gate than ours, had been burned to the ground. Only the chimney stuck up blackened and naked from the rubble. Where were his two surviving wives Karen and Zahra? Or had they survived? Where were all his many children?
Little Robin Balter, naked, filthy, bloody between her legs, cold, bony, barely pubescent. Yet she might have married my brother Marcus someday. She might have been my sister. She and always been such a bright, sharp, great little kid, all serious and knowing. Twelve going on thirty-five, Cory used to say. She always smiled when she said it.
Russell Dory, Robin’s grandfather. Only his shoes had been taken. His body had been almost torn apart by automatic weapons fire. An old man and a child. What had the painted faces gotten for all their killing?
“She died for us,” the scavenger woman had said of the green face. Some kind of insane burn-the-rich movement, Keith had said. We’ve never been rich, but to the desperate, we looked rich. We were surviving and we had our wall. Did our community die so that addicts could make a help-the-poor political statement?
There were other corpses. I didn’t get a close look at most of them. They littered the front yards, the street, and the island. There was no sign of our emergency bell now. The men who had wanted it had carried it away— perhaps to be sold for its metal.
I saw Layla Yannis, Shani’s oldest daughter. Like Robin, she had been raped. I saw Michael Talcott, one side of his head smashed in. I didn’t look around for Curtis. I was terrified that I might see him lying nearby. I was almost out of control as it was, and I couldn’t draw attention to myself. I couldn’t be anything more than another scavenger hauling away treasure.
Bodies passed under my eyes; Jeremy Balter, one of Robin’s brothers, Philip Moss, George Hsu, his wife and his oldest son, Juana Montoya, Rubin Quintanilla, Lidia Cruz… . Lidia was only eight years old. She had been raped, too.
I made it back through the gate. I didn’t break down.
I hadn’t seen Cory or my brothers in the carnage.
That didn’t mean they weren’t there, but I hadn’t seen them. They might be alive. Curtis might be alive. Where could I look for them?
The Talcotts had relatives living in Robledo, but I didn’t know where. Somewhere on the other side of River Street. I couldn’t look for them, though Curtis might have gone to them. Why hadn’t anyone else stayed to salvage what they could?
I circled the neighborhood, keeping the wall in sight, then made a greater circle. I saw no one— or at least no one I knew. I saw other street poor who stared at me.
Then because I didn’t know what else to do, I headed back toward my burned out garage on Meredith Street. I couldn’t call the police. All the phones I knew of were slag. No strangers would let me use their phone if they had phones, and I didn’t know anyone whom I could pay to call and trust to make the call. Most people would avoid me or be tempted to keep my money and never call. And anyway, if the police have ignored what’s been done to my neighborhood so far, if such a fire and so many corpses can be ignored, why should I go to them? What would they do? Arrest me? Take my cash as their fee? I wouldn’t be surprised. Best to stay clear of them.
But where was my family!
Someone called my name.
I turned around, my hand in my pocket, and saw Zahra Moss and Harry Balter— Richard Moss’s youngest wife and Robin Balter’s oldest brother.
They were an unlikely pair, but they were definitely together. They managed, without touching each other, to give the appearance of all but clinging together. Both were blood-spattered and ragged. I looked at Harry’s battered swollen face and remembered that Joanne had loved him— or thought she had— and that he wouldn’t marry her and go with her to Olivar because he believed what Dad believed about Olivar.