I climbed up top of one of the picnic tables and asked everyone to gather. It was a glorious moment, a bit of shy sunlight resting against the bare skin on my arms, the damp air freshening everything. I waited for everyone to quiet, letting the moment intensify, a nice long silence to ground our new community.
I told them how proud I was of everyone. We had plenty of food and two vehicles. We’d found another black Chevy Blazer. It was like having a fleet! I told them my dream of creating a sanctuary for people. A place where we, and eventually others, could be safe. How this was our chance to build a new society from the ground up. I said that I’d start working on everyone’s assignments, based on their skills, but that for now everyone should take the afternoon off. A few of the men stripped off their shirts and pants, hooted like chimpanzees, and made running dives into the water.
It was a perfect moment, Lily.
Then it got ruined.
“Hey, man.” It was the kid, Josh.
“What’s up, Josh?”
“I need to talk to you.”
“I have a minute or two. What’s on your mind?”
“I don’t know how to say this.”
“You can say anything to me.”
“I gotta go. I mean leave the Cluster.”
I don’t know why. But I had an urge to punch him. The kid had been with me from the beginning, when it was just me, him, Vinh, and Janis. He’d been part of the core. How could he be thinking of leaving? Still, this impulse to hit the kid was out of place. I tried to calm myself by reaching down and petting Jagger.
Josh kept talking, all nervous and twitchy. “I mean, I’m really grateful for everything you’ve taught me. All your experiences in the Congo, building shit from scratch, just using the junk at hand to make shelters. I mean, it’s, like, the coolest experience of my life, but…”
“But you wanted summer camp, not a paradigm shift.”
“No. No, I do want a paradigm shift. I totally get everything you’ve told us about the bonobos, how kindness and cooperation are just as much a part of our ancestral baggage as, you know, violence and everything. I just need to… Yeah, I guess I want to see, like, my parents. They’re worried about me.”
Thankfully my anger drained away right then. There would always be deserters. Cowards. Josh would be replaced by a dozen others.
“Do what you need to do.” I even felt affectionate toward him, the poor sop.
“I’m sorry, man. I mean…”
“Josh, this isn’t about me. I got a whole army here. It’s about you. You need to do the right thing for yourself, and I can’t tell you what that is.”
The kid looked down at his sneakers. We both knew that the right thing, the ethical decision, was to stay and help the people of Berkeley and Oakland build a new society from the muck of the earthquake. Nothing could be clearer. But fear was fear, and the boy clearly wanted his mama.
“Go,” I said. “Thank you for your service.”
“I need my gun.”
“What?”
“My gun. You borrowed it. Remember? The first night.”
“You’re too young to carry a gun.” I got up from the picnic table and started to walk away.
“That gun belongs to my dad. I can’t give it to you. I need to take it back home.”
Maybe you think I should have given him the gun. But it’s crazy out here and he’s just a kid. Besides, I had to protect the needs of the Cluster.
Which is what I told him. “I’m sorry. The Cluster needs the gun a lot more than your daddy does.”
“What? What are you talking about? Just give me the gun and I’ll leave.”
I felt bad for the kid. I really did. But that didn’t change what was right. I stripped off my clothes and dived into the reservoir where a few of the guys were splashing and yelping. I kicked hard, swimming past the roughhousers. It felt good, the cold shock of the water. Josh would never find the gun. I’d hidden it well. And what I’d said was true. Josh might get grounded, or have to endure his father shouting at him, but that gun would be serving a much greater good here. I swam all the way to the other side of the reservoir, glad to test my strength and endurance, and then swam back. By then, Josh was gone. But so was my elation at establishing the new encampment.
I wished Josh hadn’t mentioned the bonobos. What we were doing had everything to do with them, their utter sweetness, and yet their memory sometimes brings up my worst feelings. I want so badly to put all that, the agony of the night of the slaughter, behind me. I want to do good, enough good to make up for my culpability. But sometimes the pull of anger is like a tide. I can actually feel it buckling the backs of my knees.
I took Jagger into one of the tents and had a nap. Jagger always calmed me. He liked to sleep spooned against me. I’ve never had a dog before and I was blindsided by my affection for him. What a comfort that old dog was to me.
The thing is, the kid’s defection was a wakeup call. Others were grumbling. I knew we needed to strengthen our numbers. So the next day I started actively recruiting. We certainly have solid credentials: plenty of food and water, a safe encampment, the two SUVs. It feels funny sometimes, trying to convince other people about the rightness of my vision, but as long as I’m feeding people, sheltering them, I feel happy.
Two mornings ago, I woke up to find Jagger gone. This in itself was not unusual. I always left the tent flap unzipped so Jagger could go out to do his business. But when he didn’t return shortly, I went looking. An hour later I found him lying next to the shore of the reservoir, a good distance away from the encampment. He was dead.
It was just like the earthquake. I lost track of where I was again. Total emotional entropy. Everything harsh and metallic. I heard the barbed wire being snipped by the murderers. I heard the screams of the bonobos and saw the fury of Yannick. I felt that same iciness in my bowels that I’d felt when Renée told me to leave. It all came back to me, the hell of my hotel room in Kinshasa waiting for a plane out, my belief in our ancestral potential for compassion destroyed.
You would think I could look after a dog.
But that’s the thing. I had taken care of Jagger. I’d seen to his every need. Someone else was responsible for this death.
At breakfast I appointed an Inner Council, my three most trustworthy men and of course myself, and called an immediate meeting. This new development disgruntled some Cluster members. They’d accepted my informal leadership—after all, I’d organized the Cluster—but they whined about making the leadership more official.
We met at the picnic table farthest from the tents and I told the Inner Council that their first task was to find out what killed Jagger. Only one of the men balked, and I dismissed him then and there. If he didn’t understand the importance of protocol and detail, how the death of a dog could be the beginning of rot at the heart of the community, then I didn’t need the man.
Don’t judge me, Lily. Communities can unravel so quickly. I needed to act swiftly because I felt that things were deteriorating. As it turns out, I was right.
A few hours later, my two Inner Council members reported to me that Jagger had gotten into some spoiled meat that someone left in an open garbage bin.
“Find out who did it,” I said, and a few minutes later, they delivered the name of a woman who’d been a particularly vocal member of the community, often disagreeing with me. I went directly and told her to leave the encampment. When she feigned shock and asked what she’d done, I told her she was careless and a danger to the community. I couldn’t even say Jagger’s name for fear of breaking down. When she said, “Fuck you,” I realized she’d done it on purpose, killed my dog because of her envy.
I walked for hours that afternoon, feeling devastated over the loss of Jagger. As always, the thought of you loomed over me like an angel, my only solace. Inane, I know, using the word angel. It’s the opposite of everything
I believe in. That’s part of why I hadn’t come to find you sooner. I enjoy my secret little fantasy of your innocence, our outside-of-real-life correspondence. Not only did I not want to find out that you were just another flawed human being, I didn’t want you to see me this broken. That afternoon, walking along the shore of San Pablo Reservoir, I realized it was now or never. I’d take the risk.
So I went right away, that day Jagger died, and there you were, on the porch of Trinity Church’s meals program room. Exactly where you said you’d be. Artless, candid, beautiful. I had no idea I’d feel so much.
I hope you will forgive me for taking so long. For the gun. For not being as forthcoming about my story as you’ve been. For everything.
Love,
Travis
27
I’m pregnant,” Annie told Lily.
Lily fumbled the spoonful of succotash she’d just scooped up. She set down the serving spoon and wiped up the spilled glop. Then she faced Annie, visibly upset and having no idea what to say. “Have you seen a doctor?”
Annie broke out in a big grin, that single dimple piercing the spot next to her mouth, and then shouted, “Ha! You’re so stupid. As if.”
The day before, Annie had asked Lily for $2,000, and the day before that she’d said she’d joined the Army. Lily had known to ignore those comments. She did in fact feel stupid now for having believed the girl’s claim of pregnancy.
Annie took a tray of succotash and cocked a finger at Lily. “I know where you’re staying, bitch. I’m watching you.”
“I moved.”
“Yeah. I know that, too.”
“Here’s a milk for Binky.”
“What I want is your bike, white girl.”
“You know, I’m really tired today, Annie. Would you please cut the crap and move on?”
The next day, Annie came in with three long plum branches, small deep red leaves replacing the few remaining wilted blossoms. “The plums will be ripe soon. I can’t wait.” She reached the bouquet through the serving window and tapped Lily on the head, as if it were a wand.
“Where’d you get those?”
“Where do you think?”
Lily had tried to help her. She’d done nothing to harm her. True, Annie had been treated like an infestation in Joyce’s apartment, and it had been Lily who’d taken her by the elbow and led her out the door, but it hadn’t been Lily’s fault. Annie’s point with the plum branches was that she had returned to Joyce’s flat, may well have broken into it, might even be staying there. She wanted Lily to know.
After dinner, Lily went to the library. She charged her phone. She shared news with other regulars. The whole while she thought about Annie lounging on Joyce’s big queen-size bed. She knew she ought to leave it alone. She owed Joyce nothing. She owed Annie even less. But when she left the library, well after dark, she found herself riding to Joyce’s flat. She found the windows all boarded up. Maybe Annie had just been goading her, yet again.
Lily stowed the bicycle and walked down the side path as quietly as she could, feeling her way along the house and fence with her hands. Every time her feet cracked a stick or crunched some dry leaves, she froze, as if she were sneaking up on a crime scene. She ought to leave this alone, but something stronger than curiosity drew her forward. Once in the backyard, she checked the back door and found no signs of a forced entry.
Lily sat on the back stoop and let her eyes adjust to the silvery starlight. The dandelions under the plum tree were all beaten down, and Lily imagined Annie and Binky stomping around, stretching their arms up to break off the red-leafed branches. Beyond the plum tree were the two big raised beds where Joyce used to grow vegetables. A couple of volunteer tomato plants, already bearing small green globes, twined through arching rosemary and bolting thyme. What a wild place, this state of California, where fruits and herbs grew in April.
Lily took one last deep breath of the garden air and rose to her feet. She was about to leave when she noticed a dark heap at the far end of the yard, up against the back fence.
She stepped around the raised beds, moving as silently as possible, and stopped just three feet away. The thin, ashen-skinned boy lay on his side with the rotund, golden-skinned girl spooning him from behind, her arm wrapped around his waist. He clutched her hand in both of his. Binky and Annie slept soundly, their sides rising and falling. They didn’t have a blanket or sleeping bag, just each other’s warmth.
Retracing her footsteps, Lily slunk back down along the side of the house and fetched her bicycle. She rode up the hill in the dark, shouldering her bike up the series of connected paths that Professor Vernadsky had told her about, and then climbed back on to ride out the fire trail. She considered stopping again at Sal’s fence, demanding admittance. But she didn’t. Sal relished her independence, her solitude, her traps and vegetable sprouts. She didn’t want Lily’s company. Lily rode on to her own camp.
That night, she lay awake for a long time. She listened to the rooting, right outside her tent, of some small animal digging into safety. She listened to the call-and-response of two great-horned owls, friends or maybe even lovers, in the canopy of nearby trees. She felt so alone. Even Annie had Binky.
28
Lily scrubbed her shirt and jeans in the Trinity Church community room’s bathroom sink. The powdered soap chapped her hands and was hard to rinse out—she always found clumps of it dried on her clothes—but it was better than nothing. She tried to stick to a washing routine; her clothes once a week and her own body at least every other evening. Even so, some serious slippage had occurred in the last few days, as if she’d just crossed over the line from civilized to savage.
She put on her one other shirt and the pair of shorts she’d found in the library free box and packed her wet clothes in her backpack. She’d hang them to dry on the coyote brush near her tent. Then she scoured her face red and washed her hair. Rinsing with the cold water took forever. As she stood with her head under the faucet, she wondered why she had to keep deciding, over and over again, to not answer Travis’s letter.
It was the obvious right choice. Yet that last part, about his not wanting to find out that she was just another flawed human being, about his being broken, resonated so perfectly with her own feelings. She wanted to address his sorrows. As if the slaughter of the bonobos wasn’t enough, there was the death of his ex-lover, Melissa. And now the dog. She’d never not answered his letters.
He’d had a man deliver this one, handing it to her through the service window a couple of days ago. The handwriting alone unsettled her. It made her feel thirteen years old, connected to a longing that was both old and young, sweet and bitter. But she wasn’t thirteen. Furthermore, she didn’t have a messenger. Was he even checking email? She didn’t have a phone number for him. Anyway, email or texts seemed cold next to the ink and paper of his handwritten letter. She’d have to go to the reservoir herself, and that felt like a commitment of some kind. One she wasn’t ready to make. She had a plan and her sanity depended upon sticking to it.
Lily examined herself in the cracked mirror. Her grubby clothes hung loose and big. Her eyes looked as though they’d sunk farther back into her skull. Her wet hair straggled down to her shoulders. She’d lost at least ten pounds since she came to California. A fresh desperation zinged her pupils, even she could see it, and sharing that, merging her desperation with his, would undo her. She knew it would. She needed to reach for strength.
Lily swung on her backpack. She called a thank you to Kalisha—no one else was allowed to use the church bathroom and Lily was grateful for the privilege—as she walked through the now empty community room.
“Are you okay?” Kalisha asked, as if she could see what Lily had seen in the mirror.
“I’m dandy!” Lily called out, using Vicky’s word.
“Take care of yourself,” Kalisha said.
“I will.”
; Kalisha leveled a look at her, like she wasn’t convinced.
Lily stepped outside thinking she might go to the library again. She liked joining the evening crowd who gathered to tell stories or just read communally. As the door clunked shut behind her, she heard a gentle, “Hey.”
Travis stood with his shoulders and the sole of one sneaker propped against the pale pink exterior wall of the church, hands in his front pockets. He wore stone-colored khaki shorts with a cobalt blue T-shirt. A soft blond fur covered his legs. A fresh haircut, the thick blondness sheered short, made him look defenseless.
He pushed off the wall and came toward her. Instead of feeling alarmed, she felt relieved. She didn’t have to decide: here he was.
“I’m so sorry about Jagger.”
“So you read my letter?”
“Yes.” Did he think she wouldn’t?
“I hope it wasn’t too intense.”
“It was pretty intense.”
He smiled then, his ultra-white teeth so bright. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
“I hope so. I’ve missed you. Already.”
How could he miss her? They’d only met once. She tried to find the appropriate apprehension in her feelings, but all she felt was a pleasurable collapse of will. They had been friends for a couple of decades. Maybe she could help him. Anyway, Wesley had said appropriateness was no longer a working concept.
Lily fell in step beside him, pushing her bicycle. When they reached the park in front of the crumbled Berkeley City Hall, they waded right into the weeds. With the warm weather of spring, the grasses had shot sky-high, and all kinds of wildflowers, yellow dandelions and orange poppies and blue forget-me-nots, had taken up residence. Travis plopped down in the tall urban growth and crossed his legs. Lily laid her bicycle on its side and parted a place in the vegetation for herself. They had a little fort, the grasses and weeds higher than their heads. Lily sat with her legs crossed like Travis’s, their knees just touching. He reached out and tucked her hair behind each ear. His hands shook.
The Evolution of Love Page 18
