“Do you have someplace to go?” she asked us at last. Do you know anybody who still has a house?”
I looked at Harry. “You might be able to get into Olivar if you can walk there from here. The Garfields would take you in.”
He thought about that for a while. “I don’t want to,”
he said. “I don’t think there’s any more future in Olivar than there was in our neighborhood. But at least in our neighborhood, we had the guns.”
“For all the good it did us,” Zahra muttered.
“I know. But they were our guns, not hired gunmen.
No one could turn them against us. In Olivar, from what Joanne said, no one’s allowed to have a gun except the security force. And who the hell are they?”
“Company people,” I said. “People from outside Olivar.”
He nodded. “That’s what I heard, too. Maybe it will be all right, but it doesn’t sound all right.”
“It sounds better than starving,” Zahra said. “You guys have never missed a meal, have you?”
“I’m going north,” I said. “I planned to go anyway once my family was back on its feet. Now I have no family, and I’m going.”
“North where?” Zahra demanded.
I ate four of them. They were delicious, and too ripe to travel well anyway.
“Why don’t you try on some of those clothes,” I said.
“Take what fits you.”
She fit not only into Marcus’s shirt and jeans—
though she had to roll the jeans legs up— but into his shoes. Shoes are expensive. Now she has two pair.
“You let me do it, I’ll trade these little shoes for some food,” she said.
I nodded. “Tomorrow. Whatever you get, we’ll split it.
Then I’m leaving.”
“Going north?”
“Yes.”
“Just north. Do you know anything about the roads and towns and where to buy stuff or steal it? Have you got money?”
“I have maps,” I said. “They’re old, but I think they’re still good. No one’s been building new roads lately.”
“Hell no. Money?”
“A little. Not enough, I suspect.”
“No such thing as enough money. What about him?”
She gestured toward Harry’s unmoving back. He was lying down. I couldn’t tell whether he was asleep or not.
“He has to decide for himself,” I said. “Maybe he wants to hang around to look for his family before he goes.”
He turned over slowly. He looked sick, but fully aware. Zahra put the peaches she had saved for him next to him.
“I don’t want to wait for anything,” he said. “I wish we could start now. I hate this place.”
“You going with her?” Zahra asked, jabbing a thumb at me.
He looked at me. “We might be able to help each other,” he said. “At least we know each other, and. .
.I managed to grab a few hundred dollars as I ran
out of the house.” He was offering trust. He meant we could trust each other. That was no small thing.
“I was thinking of traveling as a man,” I said to him.
He seemed to be repressing a smile. “That will be safer for you. You’re at least tall enough to fool people. You’ll have to cut your hair, though.”
Zahra grunted. “Mixed couples catch hell whether people think they’re gay or straight. Harry’ll piss off all the blacks and you’ll piss off all the whites. Good luck.”
I watched her as she said it, and realized what she wasn’t saying. “You want to come?” I asked.
She sniffed. “Why should I? I won’t cut my hair!”
“No need,” I said. “We can be a black couple and their white friend. If Harry can get a reasonable tan, maybe we can claim him as a cousin.”
She hesitated, then whispered, “Yeah, I want to go.”
And she started to cry. Harry stared at her in surprise.
“Did you think we were going to just dump you?” I asked, “All you had to do was let us know.”
“I don’t have any money,” she said. “Not a dollar.”
I sighed. “Where did you get those peaches.”
“You were right. I stole them.”
“You have a useful skill, then, and information about living out here.” I faced Harry. “What do you think?”
“Her stealing doesn’t bother you?” he asked “I mean to survive,” I said.
“`Thou shalt not steal,’” he quoted. “Years and years— a lifetime of `Thou shalt not steal.’”
I had to smother a flash of anger before I could answer. He wasn’t my father. He had no business quoting scripture at me. He was nobody. I didn’t look at him. I didn’t speak until I knew my voice would sound normal. Then, “I said I mean to survive,” I told him. “Don’t you?”
He nodded. “It wasn’t a criticism. I’m just surprised.”
“I hope it won’t ever mean getting caught or leaving someone else to starve,” I said. And to my own surprise, I smiled. “I’ve thought about it. That’s the way I feel, but I’ve never stolen anything.”
“You’re kidding!” Zahra said.
I shrugged. “It’s true. I grew up trying to set a good example for my brothers and trying to live up to my father’s expectations. That seemed like what I should be doing.”
“Oldest kid,” Harry said. “I know.” He was the oldest in his family.
“Oldest, hell,” Zahra said, laughing. “You’re both babies out here.”
And that wasn’t offensive, somehow. Perhaps because it was true. “I’m inexperienced,” I admitted.
“But I can learn. You’re going to be one of my teachers.”
“One?” she said. “Who have you got but me?”
“Everyone.”
She looked scornful. “No one.”
“Everyone who’s surviving out here knows things that I need to know,” I said. “I’ll watch them, I’ll listen to them, I’ll learn from them. If I don’t, I’ll be killed.
And like I said, I intend to survive.”
“They’ll sell you a bowl of shit,” she said.
I nodded. “I know. But I’ll buy as few of those as possible.”
She looked at me for a long time, then sighed. “I wish I’d known you better before all this happened,”
she said. “You’re a weird preacher’s kid. If you still want to play man, I’ll cut your hair for you.”
I took my many purchases out to what was once the ground floor of a parking structure, and was now a kind of semi-enclosed flea market. Many of the things dug out of ash heaps and landfills wind up for sale here. The rule is that if you buy something in the store, you can sell something of similar value in the structure. Your receipt, coded and dated, is your peddler’s license.
The structure was patrolled, though more to check these licenses than to keep anyone safe. Still, the structure was safer than the street.
I found Harry and Zahra sitting on our bundles, Harry
waiting to go into the store, and Zahra waiting for her license. They had put their backs against a wall of the store at a spot away from the street and away from the biggest crowd of buyers and sellers. I gave Zahra the receipt and began to separate and pack our new supplies. We would leave as soon as Zahra and Harry finished their buying and selling.
We walked down to the freeway— the 118— and turned west. We would take the 118 to the 23 and the 23 to U.S. 101. The 101 would take us up the coast toward Oregon. We became part of a broad river of people walking west on the freeway. Only a few straggled east against the current— east toward the mountains and the desert. Where were the westward walkers going? To something, or just away from here?
We saw a few trucks— most of them run at night-swarms of bikes or electric cycles, and two cars. All these had plenty of room to speed along the outer lanes past us. We’re safer if we keep to the left lanes away from the on and off ramps. It’s against the law in California to walk on the freeways, but the law is archaic. Everyone who walks walks on the freeways sooner or later. Freeways provide the most direct routes between cities and parts of cities. Dad walked or bicycled on them often. Some prostitutes and peddlers of food, water, and other necessities live along the freeways in sheds or shacks or in the open air. Beggars, thieves, and murderers live here, too.