She could to that.
“Dogs,” I said. “Wake Harry.” Then I headed for the mixed couple. The woman was screaming and beating at a dog with her hands. A second dog was dodging the man’s kicks and going for the baby.
Only the third dog was clear of the family.
I stopped, slipped the safety, and as the third dog went in toward the baby, I shot it.
The dog dropped without a sound. I dropped, too, gasping, feeling kicked in the chest. It surprised me how hard the loose sand was to fall on.
At the crack of the shot, the other two dogs took off inland. From my prone position, I sighted on them as they ran. I might have been able to pick off one more of them, but I let them go. I hurt enough already. I couldn’t catch my breath, it seemed. As I gasped, though, it occurred to me that prone was a good shooting position for me. Sharing would be less able to incapacitate me at once if I shot two-handed and prone. I filed the knowledge away for future use.
Also, it was interesting that the dogs had been frightened by my shot. Was it the sound that scared them or the fact that one of them had been hit? I wish I knew more about them. I’ve read books about them being intelligent, loyal pets, but that’s all in the past. Dogs now are wild animals who will eat a baby if they can.
I felt that the dog I had shot was dead. It wasn’t moving. But by now a lot of people were awake and moving around. A living dog, even wounded, would be frantic to get away.
The pain in my chest began to ebb. When I could breathe without gasping, I stood up and walked back to our camp. There was so much confusion by then that no one noticed me except Harry and Zahra.
Harry came out to meet me. He took the gun from my hand, then took my arm and steered me back to my sleepsack.
“So you hit something,” he said as I sat gasping again from the small exertion.
“Is your baby all right?” I asked.
“He had scratches and sand in his eyes and mouth from being dragged.” She stroked the sleeping baby’s black hair. “I put salve on the scratches and washed his eyes. He’s all right now. He’s so good.
He only cried a little bit.”
“Hardly ever cries,” Travis said with quiet pride.
Travis has an unusual deep-black complexion— skin so smooth that I can’t believe he has ever in his life had a pimple. Looking at him makes me want to touch him and see how all that perfect skin feels.
He’s young, good looking, and intense— a stocky, muscular man, tall, but a little shorter and a little heavier than Harry. Natividad is stocky, too— a pale brown woman with a round, pretty face long black hair bound up in a coil atop her head. She’s short, but it isn’t surprising somehow that she can carry a pack and a baby and keep up a steady pace all day.
I like her, feel inclined to trust her. I’ll have to be careful about that. But I don’t believe she would steal from us. Travis has not accepted us yet, but she has. We’ve helped her baby. We’re her friends.
“We’re going to Seattle,” she told us. “Travis has an aunt there. She says we can stay with her until we find work. We want to find work that pays money.”
“Don’t we all,” Zahra agreed. She sat on Harry’s sleepsack with him, his arm around her. Tonight could be tiresome for me.
Travis and Natividad sat on their three sacks, spread out to give their baby room to crawl when he woke up. Natividad had harnessed him to her wrist with a length of clothesline.
I felt alone between the two couples. I let them talk about their hopes and rumors of northern edens. I took out my notebook and began to write up the day’s events, still savoring the last of the chocolate.
The baby awoke hungry and crying. Natividad opened her loose shirt, gave him a breast, and moved over near me to see what I was doing.
“You can read and write,” she said with surprise. “I thought you might be drawing. What are you writing?”
“She’s always writing,” Harry said. “Ask to read her poetry. Some of it isn’t bad.”
I winced. My name is androgynous, in pronunciation at least— Lauren sounds like the more masculine Loren. But pronouns are more specific, and still a problem for Harry.
“She?” Travis asked right on cue. “Her?”
“Damn it, Harry,” I said. “We forgot to buy that tape for your mouth.”
He shook his head, then gave me an embarrassed smile. “I’ve known you all my life. It isn’t easy to remember to switch all your pronouns. I think it’s all right this time, though.”
“I told you so!” Natividad said to her husband. Then she looked embarrassed. “I told him you didn’t look like a man,” she said to me. “You’re tall and strong, but…I don’t know. You don’t have a man’s face.”
I had, almost, a man’s chest and hips, so maybe I should be glad to hear that I didn’t have a man’s face— though it wasn’t going to help me on the road.
“We believed two men and a woman would be more likely to survive than two women and a man,” I said.
“Out here, the trick is to avoid confrontation by looking strong.”
“The three of us aren’t going to help you look strong,” Travis said. He sounded bitter. Did he resent the baby and Natividad?
“You are our natural allies,” I said. “You sneered at that last time I said it, but it’s true. The baby won’t weaken us much, I hope, and he’ll have a better chance of surviving with five adults around him.”
“I can take care of my wife and my son,” Travis said with more pride than sense. I decided not to hear him.
“I think you and Natividad will strengthen us,” I said.
“Two more pairs of eyes, two more pairs of hands.
Do you have knives?”
“Yes.” He patted his pants pocket. “I wish we had guns like you.”
I wished we had guns— plural— too. But I didn’t say so. “You and Natividad look strong and healthy,” I said. “Predators will look at a group like the five of us and move on to easier prey.”
Travis grunted, still noncommittal. Well, I had helped him twice, and now I was a woman. It might take him a while to forgive me for that, no matter how grateful he was.
“I want to hear some of your poetry,” Natividad said.
“The man we worked for, his wife used to write poetry. She would read it to me sometimes when she was feeling lonely. I liked it. Read me something of yours before it gets too dark.”
Odd to think of a rich woman reading to her maid-which was who Natividad had been. Maybe I had the wrong idea of rich women. But then, everyone gets lonely. I put my journal down and picked up my book of Earthseed verses. I chose soft, nonpreachy verses, good for road-weary minds and bodies.
18
Once or twice
each week
A Gathering of Earthseed
is a good and necessary thing.
It vents emotion, then
quiets the mind.
It focuses attention,
strengthens purpose, and
unifies people.
EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING
SUNDAY, AUGUST 8, 2027
“You believe in all this Earthseed stuff, don’t you?”
Travis asked me.
It was our day off, our day of rest. We had left the highway to find a beach where we could camp for the day and night and be comfortable. The Santa Barbara beach we had found included a partly burned park where there were trees and tables. It wasn’t crowded, and we could have a little daytime privacy. The water was only a short walk away. The two couples took turns disappearing while I watched their packs and the baby. Interesting that the Douglases were already comfortable trusting me with all that was precious to them. We didn’t trust them to watch alone last night or the night before, though we did make them watch. We had no walls to put our backs against last night so it was useful to have two watchers at a time. Natividad watched with me and Travis watched with Harry. Finally, Zahra watched alone.